The Lack of Tog in the U.S.

[Revvik]

Actually, Gorilla Shaman serves a better purpose than mana denial.
It serves to fizzle Goblin Welder activations.

Against Meandeck Gifts, however, the mana denial is nice but practically unnecessary.  So although Gorilla Shaman is a beautiful tool to have, he is simply unnecessary, although I have played him in the past and would enjoy playing with him in the future again sometime.

I also advocate maindecking a singular copy of Boseiju, who Shelters All Blue Instants from Meddlesome Stax Lock Components.  Chalice of the Void and In the Eye of Chaos both counter spells - hooray for them.  Obviously, Boseiju can get Wastelanded, but Stax players don't often sit on Wastelands unless you have nothing but basics out - they tend to use them on whatever dual land you're currently shorter on.

The four-color versus three-color, UBrg versus UBg versus UBr argument has been done to death. 
Playwutchalike.

[xrizzo]

@xrizzo:

I think its VERY bad just to run 1 win condition(tinker/dsc)
any deck should run a secondary win condition, tog is the best suitable win after tinker/dsc.
althogh 3 togs is too much.

I agree two win conditions are necessary.  I actually won a Time Walk with just Tinker/DSC as the primary, but I admit I had other help in the form of Old Man of the Sea and other tech...

While Tog may be that tech for some people, I agree with the board consensus, that Tog is a metagame decision.

[keratinx]

Firstly, that list looks absolutely awful to me, it doesn't look metagamed to beat anything in the format.  The mana base of 8 dual lands is way to many, and I don't think that you can beat Fish with their Wastelands and Chalices.  Secondly, Engineered Explosives is much better in control decks that play some combination of Wasteland, Strip Mine and Library so that you can play it for zero to kill opposing Moxes and Chalices.  Also, I would not play Mind Twist in the main right now, because everybody seems to think Misdirection is such a savage maindeck card. 

I think it is also important to note that Tog is not a mainstream deck; rather, it is a metagame deck that can be tweaked to do very specific things and win quite handily against very specific matchups.   One of the key bonuses, or reasons to play Tog, is its consistency of draws.  It plays very similarly to its old extended counterpart, because it draws a shitload of cards, plays situational answers to things that slip through the counterwall that it can easily find via Wish or Scroll, and gets to Yawgmoth's Will on average a turn before the other control decks.  In this sense Tog is very similar in style to Gifts.

I think it is unfair to say that Tog is a bad card, or that it is outdated.  The little guy is a savage creature and a wonderful combo piece all built into one.  Styles and metagames change and decks go in and out of fashion with players; right now Gifts is is the fast control deck of choice.  And that is fine, it is a good deck.  However, a deck like Tog can be an absolutely savvy metagame choice, as Josh Franklin clearly proved.  Playing the correct deck is a difficult thing to do.  One must evaluate and predict the metagame and then chose a decklist that is able to beat whatever one predicts.  Even more importantly, one must predict correctly. 

Playing Gorilla Shaman's and Engineered Explosives in a deck that wants to race to Yawgmoth's Will is an awful decision.  If one wants to play that particular style play a slower control deck that actually wants to control the board and build up.  Slaver or 3cc are both good examples of decks that might utilize this strategy.  Josh Franklin hit the nail right on the head, if you speed Tog up and give it consistency you can actually race the other control decks and outdraw one's opposition.  Merchant Scroll in the maindeck is an extremely powerful addition, and the fact that you can scroll for Echoing Truth and other maindeck situational cards, as well as Recall or Intuition makes his list clearly better than one that runs Gorilla Shaman and Explosives. 

Also, Tog is a much better threat against FCG and correct builds of fish. I cannot stress this enough, Psychatog kills an opponent in one turn.  Draksteel takes two swings.  Psychatog races better than any other creature in the game.  Also, the issue of Duress.  Duress is only good against Combo, because that is the only match up in Magic where I would be willing to spend my mainphase mana (tempo) and a card to trade for one of my opponents cards.  It is usually a much stronger strategy to just play your own threats and make an opponent react to you. 

And, in my opinion as powerful as paying 3 mana and and artifact to play an 11/11 guy is, adding the Tinker / Colossus combo to every single deck seems 'newbalicious' to me.  Decks don't need the option of doing that to win.  If your deck is streamlined to do a specific job, and the pilot understands how to do that job correctly, then one shouldn't need to rely on the Colossus Crutch to win games.  Cutting Psychatogs from a Tog deck simply means that ones gameplan becomes more muddled and uncertain.  Not only is Colossus a dead card when he is in your hand, but he also makes Tinker a dead card.  Tog is almost never dead.  He pitches to Force of Will and is an extremely aggressive threat, especially against Stax.  There is nothing I hate more when playing a slow Stax hand than an early beatdown Psychatog, because he wins the game.

Tog is a metagame deck.  In order for the deck to be good, one has to evaluate the metagame and play with a variant of the deck that can win against a predicted field.  Franklin did this with his Green-Atog list, and it paid off in spades.  However, Tog has never been a deck that rewarded netdeckers. or somekind of standardized version of the deck, the way that Stax and Slaver do.  Tog has many, many, open card slots and it takes a really strong player to figure out what they should be for any given tournament.

@forcefieldyou:

Obviously you haven't played with this build yet. Since that Fish is my worst match-up, I'd tested heavily against all its variants: WTF, Ur Fish and UW Fish. Of all the 3, I'd say that UW Fish is the hardest amongst the 3 match-ups. Why do I say that this deck is good? 4 Island. Like Oath, I modified this Tog of mine to have a stable mana base like that of Oath, hence, 4 Islands are a must in the main deck. Along with 5 blue fetches and 8 dual lands, you'd expect Fish to keep mana denying me and don't lay its threats? If you say yes, then I would say that I need to survive to 3 mana and a red source in my hand to Cunning Wish and play Firestorm. Adding Gorilla Shaman allows you to have an edge over Null Rod with drain mana. Remember, you have 4 copies of Mana Drain in your mainboard. My metagame is basically Combo-Control and anti-Combo-Control. Decks like SSB, Meandeck Gifts, TPS, Stax and Fishes are even swimming around my meta game.

Reagrding my mana base. Playing 4 copies of Underground Sea and Volcanic Island reduces the need to fetch for them in desperate situations. Having your Fetchland stifled and you forceing them and them dazing you, you die! I'd rather them Wasteland then Stifling my fetchlands. Most of the time against Fish, you fetch for Island. Like what Smmemnen said in Psychatog 2k5, you need to plan your mana base properly as per match up. Against decks with Wasteland, fetch for Island. This is what I do against Fish and Stax. Fetching for Sea against combo and volcanic island against control is golden. Still on the issue about the mana base, Library of Alexandria is a bane due to the many Wastelands in the format. I say it is a bane because it does undesirable effects to the mana base. Do you remove 1 Volcanic Island or Underground Sea for the Library. Boseiju is situational and a metagame call. Right now it seems like a good card to play mainboard.

I agree with your opinion on running 4 Merchant Scrolls as it can search up mainboard solutions. However, saying that scrolls are better than Shaman and EE is not exactly right. I've tested with Gorilla Shaman replacing Tog and I found them very good, so good that I removed my maindecked Mystical Tutor for Gorilla Shaman, allowing Tog to remain in the deck. Shaman does not win the game. We both agree on that. It gains back the tempo advantage that Stax tries to build. It does not affect the Gifts match up though. It was not meant to do that. Its main purpose is: to gain back tempo advantage. This point is very important as Psychatog is a tempo black hole, like what Smmenen said in his article. Hence, gaining back that was lost us Uber. Right now I'm playing with 24 mana sources and getting mana flooded most of the time. Hence I might actually cut down to 3 Islands to have the Tog/Shaman/Colossus creature base and have Mystical Tutor at the same time. For most of you who don't know, my deck is simply a modification of Marco Ardoino's deck who got 8th in French Vintage Championships. I'm not saying that I'm playing his deck cuz it got Top 8. I'm playing it cuz I like solution list of his SB, and how it plays control very well.

To fircefieldyou: Please don't let this reply of mine tell you that I don't take your opinions. I thank you for your reply and it gave me further insights on how Tog can be beaten and its weakness. A question which is off topic. How do you find Meandeck Oath?

[forests failed you]

You are right I have not tested this deck, and sometimes things that look bad to me on paper turn out to be really good in actual game play.  I'll admit when Franklin told me he was playing 4 Merchant Scroll in his Tog build it didn't seem amazing to me until I actually played some matches.  However, we have tested Darksteel Colossus out and it proved for us to be purely worse than multiple Psychatogs. 

My main problem with the deck is that with one Colossus, one Tinker and one Psychatog to win with you run out of options to win with really quickly.  Especially if you have to Force with either Tog or Tinker in the early game to stay alive.  Also, Colossus is realy weak right now against Stax and Slaver decks that play Goblin Welder.  With zero Berserk anywhere in the board I also question the validity of even playing a Psychatog in the deck at all.  Are there not better cards that could take his place?  Maybe even a Triskellion Razormane Masticore, or, dare I say Morphling, could possibly be more effective.

From what I'm looking at with your list it almost looks like you want to be playing Gifts, and I'm wondering why you wouldn't just cut Cunning Wish, Tog, Shaman, and Ak /Intution and just play some sort of Gifts variant.  Either way, good luck with your list.

[Fubar]

I don't understand the discussion of taking out the togs as your win conditions, to be replaced by DSC, tink, & Gshaman.  How does the deck survive at all if DSC is plowed? 

[Methuselahn]

I don't understand the discussion of taking out the togs as your win conditions, to be replaced by DSC, tink, & Gshaman.  How does the deck survive at all if DSC is plowed? 

You rely on Duress, Mana Drain, Force of Will, Cunning Wish, or your other win conditions.

What's with the lack of Tog in the U.S.?

Personally, I think people are generally bored with Tog.  This coupled with the fact that nearly everyone has faced it and knows how to play against it makes it less appealing.

I'm not sure why a lack of a deck in a certain region has anything to do with it's viabilitiy.  People play bad decks all the time, unknowingly.  Usually it is because they are not up to date/have no clue what their meta will be like, but mostly because they don't know the new technology which makes their own deck strategically inferior.

[jpmeyer]

I don't understand the discussion of taking out the DSC as your win conditions, to be replaced by Togs.  How does the deck survive at all if Tog is plowed?

[onelovemachine]

I don't understand the discussion of taking out the DSC as your win conditions, to be replaced by Togs.  How does the deck survive at all if Tog is plowed?
 

This makes me think you have never played tog before.  Tog doesn't care about stp except in a few somewhat random situations where it would be really nice if tog could just win for you, and if the deck is doing what it is supposed to those situations never come up.  If dsc is plowed, by some miracle or misplay, you have virtually no chance of winning the game.  If this deck had like 10 artifacts, a rebuild and burning wish somewhere in it you might still be able to win, but to remove your only solid win condition is truly game over.  If one tog dies to swords there is probably at least one more to back him up. 

Personally, I think people are generally bored with Tog.  This coupled with the fact that nearly everyone has faced it and knows how to play against it makes it less appealing.
 

People probably are bored with tog they have been winning with him in all formats for awhile, but I don't think there is any special "way" to play against tog any different from playing against other control decks.  And I don't think tog is hosed as easily by welders or tormod's crypts as the other two drain combo decks in the format. 

  Decks like SSB, Meandeck Gifts, TPS, Stax and Fishes are even swimming around my meta game.

Of these decks, meandeck gifts is the one you don't want to see as I have already said.  But TPS, ssb, most stax and fishies are all fine for you with the build I have.  In fact, I think decks that run duresses main as well as deep analysis, 4 wish and mindtwist have a worse game than my build from gencon against ALL of the matches you described. 

Every other decklist posted in this thread is a control deck.  That is evident by the speed of the cards it plays.  Four cunning wishes is too slow.  I was a huge fan of 4 wish some time ago, but that build of tog was a different deck.  Duress isn't utility enough.  Honestly, duress doesn't help you win any matchups that you have problems with playing tog.  Deep is clearly too slow and is misdirectable.  The cards in my deck are very streamlined and do one thing only:  try to win the game.  I don't duress my oponent.  I outdraw them and have a hand with a will and a bunch of forces and drains.  I don't wish for answers to fish guys;  I merchant scroll up a gush or a echoing truth in an absolute emergency, draw waaaaaaayyyyyy too many cards and wish for berserk.  The only cards I see that I wish I were somehow playing are rebs and shamans.  Shaman helps you combo by removing challice of the void.  Rebs are better protection/ counter than duress most of the time. 

I see very little reason to play red. Shaman is no argument to me as I agree with our italian friend, who questions: "Does tog really need mana denial ?"
Chalice may be huge in some areas in America, but is a rare sight in Europe these days... It is not to be feared. If it rears its ugly head, Cunning Wish will solve it with Oxidize or Echoing Truth. 

Mark my words: when it does rear its ugly head over there, see if your cunning wishes help.  They will be far too slow and too costly against the decks playing challice......

onelovemachine - the list is tight, but running 4x each of trops and u seas seems excessive. is there any reason you chose not to run sol ring...one of the best mana enabler's in tog? i can't really see any reason not to run the sol ring for either a trop or sea (trop most likely) especially given the fact your mana base is already fairly strong.   

There is still some question as to the mana base of this deck and I don't understand why.  Tog plays ALWAYS AND FOREVER:
5mox
lotus
crypt
If you somehow have room for sol ring too that might be cute but its no mana crypt.
5-6 fetches
4+islands
3-4 seas depending on how many black cards you insist on running
3-4 other duals, be it just volcs, just trops or some combination
0 strip effects- those are bad
0 boseijuice who hates that he has to come into play tapped- those make you think they are good when they work, but they are lying
0-1 Loa's In some crazy ass, control heavy metagame without fishes, fcg's or stax this guy can be pretty good
0 tundras- don't look at european deck lists... no offense  :lol:
0 bazaars- same logic
And a minimum of 24 manas and no gush is not a mana.  Oh, and don't play swamp...... sometimes I do bad things too.

Why did I play 4 trops?..... the honest answer:  Funniest Story Evar!

Brian Fucking Demars filled out my decklist... :shock:..... Why did I let the guy with two mox sapphires do that?  Because I was very tired, and I actually thought Mark Biller was doing it.  My decklist at gencon was probably wrong.  I had 3 trops and another fetch....... the irony......    

  Cunning Wish/Gush is often (NOT EVERYTIME) a game winning combo by itself.

I used to play tog as a control deck a very long time ago.  Type two tog experience told me that if I could just keep from losing My win condition would become inevitable.  The win condition being draw spells into tog-walk.  My decks in the past have included maindeck fire/ice, 4 duress/ 4 wish builds, strip effects (shameful I know.....), Mindtwist, exposives etc....  It took me a long time to realize that In the End, all I want to do is berserk psychatog, and I was just taking too long to do it before. 

[forests failed you]

Jesus Christ!  I am so sorry I screwed up your deck reg sheet!!!!  I am seriously laughing my ass off right now.  Yeah, I officially ban myself from filling out deck sheets ever again.  I'm going to take Wilkerson to every tournament for the rest of my life and make him do it from now on.

But yeah four trops would be pretty awful.  Good thing they didn't deck check us in top eight... I would never have heard the end of it. 

[Methuselahn]

Personally, I think people are generally bored with Tog.  This coupled with the fact that nearly everyone has faced it and knows how to play against it makes it less appealing.
 

People probably are bored with tog they have been winning with him in all formats for awhile, but I don't think there is any special "way" to play against tog any different from playing against other control decks.  And I don't think tog is hosed as easily by welders or tormod's crypts as the other two drain combo decks in the format.

What about Mindslaver?  I heard that there's a good deck with that card in it.  Oh, and look at Tog's matchup there. 

[cosineme]

Exactly, that is why I asked about your mana base. Hulk has always run the same mana base, so I wanted to clarify why you were running an excessive number of trops, and that strange lonely swamp. I mean, I can see the need for black if you're going to be bringing duress from the board, but running the 4th sea is almost always better than running a single swamp.

i still don't see how sol ring wasn't in your decklist though. doesn't sol ring have extreme synergy with the deck? intuition, merchant scroll, ak, etc? it wasn't worth ditching the 4th trop for?

anyways, good job again.

[onelovemachine]

  What about Mindslaver?  I heard that there's a good deck with that card in it.  Oh, and look at Tog's matchup there.   

Oh my god.  You are still on that "tog loses to slaver" kick.  Tog loses to mindslaver activations.  So does EVERY deck in the format.  Tog does not lose to slaver.dec, especially not the versions that are playable right now.  You don't have to believe me, but that is the last I'll say about it.

@cosineme:  Sol ring is good, but not as good as mana crypt.  Crypt is just busted and does everything that sol ring does but better.  And as you see by my last post, I actually played 6 fetch and 3 trop in that tournament.

[forests failed you]

I'd say Slaver has a slight advantage over Tog.  But as Franklin has stated it is far from being a 'bad matchup.'

[jpmeyer]

I don't understand the discussion of taking out the DSC as your win conditions, to be replaced by Togs.  How does the deck survive at all if Tog is plowed?
 

This makes me think you have never played tog before.  Tog doesn't care about stp except in a few somewhat random situations where it would be really nice if tog could just win for you, and if the deck is doing what it is supposed to those situations never come up.  If dsc is plowed, by some miracle or misplay, you have virtually no chance of winning the game.  If this deck had like 10 artifacts, a rebuild and burning wish somewhere in it you might still be able to win, but to remove your only solid win condition is truly game over.  If one tog dies to swords there is probably at least one more to back him up. 

Leaving aside the fact that I am creditted with being the person to develop Tog in Type 1, your post indicates that you fail to recognize that 1) it is better to StP/REB an 18/19 Tog than a 1/2 Tog and 2) that an StP/REB on a Tog that you are attempting to go lethal with sets you back so far in terms of development that you are going to have a lot of trouble winning even though you still have victory conditions in your deck.

[Revvik]

Misplay: You were Alpha Striking with Psychatog when you had no protection for Swords to Plowshares or Red Elemental Blast.  In some cases this may be correct, like when you're about to lose anyways and you might as well try for the win.
But for someone who has actually ported the deck to Vintage, I would think you would know better than that.

In fact, I KNOW you do.  I believe you were one of the ones commenting on "Swords to Plowshares being irrelevant to Psychatog."  And having a Tog plowed is still better than having a Colossus plowed - you still have 1-2 left, while DSC based decks have either a Psychatog left, a Gorilla Shaman left (congratulations?), or a Drifting Djinn left.

[jpmeyer]

Sigh.

Since both decks need to put all their eggs in one basket, fearing StP is either relevent for both or irrelevent for both.  The Tog sitting on the board does nothing until you are trying to win.  If they StP it, they haven't done anything to slow your strategy down just as you have done nothing to advance your strategy.  Thus, StP is irrelevent at this point since StP doesn't counter AK, Will, etc. 

The StP is very relevent when you are going all-in with the Tog because you have to momentarily expose yourself.  Tog however is designed to minimze that risk in numerous ways (Duress, Will combo kills, etc.)  Gifts also has to momentarily expose itself, but it minimizes that risk in the same way.

Therefore, Tog and Colossus have the same relationship with regards to potential removal spells.  If either is removed, you lose the game, but the decks are designed to win the game first.

[Revvik]

In the second instance, Swords to Plowshares is also bad.  The risk of Swords to Plowshares is nonexistant after casting Duress, followed by resolving Yawgmoth's Will.  There's also no risk of Swords against a Meandeck Gifts player due to the alternate Tendrils kill and the presence of maindeck Misdirections (provided there's another target - duh).

Swords to Plowshares only makes a difference when you've stressed the Psychatog player hard enough to where the player has to play the 'Tog in order to help withstand a creature onslaught, after which you Swords the 'Tog to draw out a counterspell and play another bomb (like Standstill if the Psychatog alone wouldn't break your creature attack).

I think the only time Swords to Plowshares is ever good against either deck is when the Tinker player leads with a first-turn Tinker with FOW backup and the opponent is holding Force of Will, Swords to Plowshares, and a blue card (or neither player has Force - but the Force of Wills pretty much ensure that the Tinker player won't have sufficient cards in hand for a timely recovery).

Keep in mind I'm not saying this for your benefit - I don't want someone fairly new to the format to think that sitting on a lone Swords to Plowshares has a true advantage.  And to those who say Psychatog decks have no more advantage due to players knowing how to play against them, let me remind you that I've had people side in Ground Seals against me.  And not at a local event - this was at the last Chicago Star City, I think Round 5.

[xrizzo]

I don't understand the discussion of taking out the DSC as your win conditions, to be replaced by Togs.  How does the deck survive at all if Tog is plowed?

This makes me think you have never played tog before. 

Are you freaking joking me?  JP is THE developer of Tog in type 1.  I know he said this above, but it must be re-iterated. 

[forests failed you]

Josh Franklin was responding to Fubar who typed the phrase "what if your Tog gets plowed."  I'm not exactly sure why JP chose to quote it and not respond.

Also, and I can say this with complete confidence because I know Onelovemachine personally:  Josh Franklin is the Vintage Tog guy right now.  He continues to tweak, develop, and metagame the deck far above and beyond where anybody else has taken that deck.  The top down design of old school Tog was fairly simple and there was no equally fast competing control deck at the time.  Right now playing Tog requires the pilot to beat not only Workshops, but competing control decks like Gifts and Slaver. 

The very fact that Onelovemachine has the experience and foresight to construct a Psychatog deck, which many of this formats 'good' plays have labeled an extinct archtype and pilot it to a 4th place finish at Gencon tells me that his insights into the deck might be particularly valuable.  No disrespect to JP, because he is a great player and an equally great guy, but I would wager the opinions of the Tog player who is actually expanding, developing, and winning with the deck now are more valuable to contemporary players who are also trying to play the deck, than somebody who designed the early incarnations of the deck in a completely different metagame. 

However, Josh wasn't wagering that JP had never played the deck before, he was responding to the person who actually wrote the phrase in the first place (who JP in turn quoted later on in the thread.).

[Anders Noer]

Josh Franklin was responding to Fubar who typed the phrase "what if your Tog gets plowed."  I'm not exactly sure why JP chose to quote it and not respond.

Oh, I think you missed the point.

If you read JP's quote thoroughly, you'll see that he actually switched a few words, making the former statement into a valid question. It can be re-phrased into something like this: "Does it really matter, which win condition you have? (Tog or Colossus) You only go for the win with backup anyway, making StP equally irrelevant vs. both builds..."

I don't care who 'invented tog' - it is irrelevant.

[Revvik]

Are you freaking joking me?  JP is THE developer of Tog in type 1.  I know he said this above, but it must be re-iterated. 

And Henry Ford could look at the rotary-engined Mazdas and sneer, saying "What did you do?"

[Jacob Orlove]

Okay, people. Enough.