[Discussion] Belcher optimization

[Klep]

How does it affect consistency if I can consistently cast all of the blue cards? The whole arguement that adding colors to decks makes them less consistent is because of wasteland. This is why decks like 4cc are not playable. However, Belcher runs 2-3 lands. Not 20.

It's exceedingly simple.  Before the deck had 3 colors, so the only colors of mana you ever needed were one of those 3.  After adding a color, in the same 60 cards you now need to be able to provide 4 colors of mana.  If you can't understand why that causes a drop in consistency, then I have to wonder how you managed to win a tournament at all.  Just because you personally haven't noticed the drop doesn't mean it isn't there.  It is, because it has to be.  It's a simple mathematical certainty.

[Whatever Works]

How does it affect consistency if I can consistently cast all of the blue cards? The whole arguement that adding colors to decks makes them less consistent is because of wasteland. This is why decks like 4cc are not playable. However, Belcher runs 2-3 lands. Not 20.

It's exceedingly simple.  Before the deck had 3 colors, so the only colors of mana you ever needed were one of those 3.  After adding a color, in the same 60 cards you now need to be able to provide 4 colors of mana.  If you can't understand why that causes a drop in consistency, then I have to wonder how you managed to win a tournament at all.  Just because you personally haven't noticed the drop doesn't mean it isn't there.  It is, because it has to be.  It's a simple mathematical certainty.

I understand the add a color lose efficiency arguement. However I just dont think that it applys.

That inconsistency to 4 color control was due to wasteland. Players were able to deny 4cc mana of one of the major colors so that it was unable to have both drain mana up, and/or able to cast key threats.

This doesnt apply to belcher, because it only runs 3 lands, and it has so many mana fixers that its completely irrelevent, and almost immune to color denial.

Kyle L

[Klep]

I understand the add a color lose efficiency arguement. However I just dont think that it applys.

You clearly don't, because then you wouldn't say...

That inconsistency to 4 color control was due to wasteland. Players were able to deny 4cc mana of one of the major colors so that it was unable to have both drain mana up, and/or able to cast key threats.

This doesnt apply to belcher, because it only runs 3 lands, and it has so many mana fixers that its completely irrelevent, and almost immune to color denial.

The drop in consistency is a mathematical certainty.  By adding more colors to a deck you are guaranteed to encounter more situations in which you do not have the colors you need.  This is not open to a debate, it is a simple truth, understood for almost as long as the game has existed.

[Whatever Works]

I understand the add a color lose efficiency arguement. However I just dont think that it applys.

You clearly don't, because then you wouldn't say...

That inconsistency to 4 color control was due to wasteland. Players were able to deny 4cc mana of one of the major colors so that it was unable to have both drain mana up, and/or able to cast key threats.

This doesnt apply to belcher, because it only runs 3 lands, and it has so many mana fixers that its completely irrelevent, and almost immune to color denial.

The drop in consistency is a mathematical certainty.  By adding more colors to a deck you are guaranteed to encounter more situations in which you do not have the colors you need.  This is not open to a debate, it is a simple truth, understood for almost as long as the game has existed.

OK, technically adding a color means that you need more colors and you encounter situations where you need said colors. HOWEVER, I am not argueing that!!! I understand the math etc... but I am not arguing that at all. I am saying that the drawback of running more colors loses consistency not just from more colors, but other forms of land/mana denial that belcher doesnt have to deal with.

I am argueing that belcher has the tools at its disposal to be able to run a 3rd color without hurting the consistency ennough to counteract the obvious advantages blue gives to the deck.

Kyle L

[VarienTanafres]

I have a simple question...who cares? It's his deck, let him run it with 20 land if he so chooses. If it's an ego issue as to what deck is better, then play each other or keep putting up results. Personally after playing against this deck with Non-Chalice Oath, I find like most combo decks, it's hit or miss, with a good player that knows what they're doing, it tends to be a hit.
Pretourney my deck beat his just fooling around. Ended middle of second game to start the tournament. When I faced him Round 2 , he never mulligan'd either turn and he went off on Turn 2 after losing the roll, then Turn 1 next game. Granted, he belched me with 1 land in the deck Game 2, but it was the Taiga and he only needed to reveal 10 cards. Half the time the game is a gamble/luck anyways. With Taiga in the deck, you only need to reveal 10 cards to win. The chances of getting at least 10 cards before the Taiga are pretty good.

[Imsomniac101]

Imsoniac101
Quote
Yes. We all know that AR and Tinker are huge bombs. However the main reason why blue isn't included in Belcher lists is because of the mana requirements. I think that's the part most people are missing. The extra colour doesn't gel well with the rest of the deck.


Based on #'s I posted up above the color does gel with the deck, and my testing only supports this.

You misunderstood me. I meant colour requirements and not the effect of the cards themselves, cuz we all know that AR and P9 are insane.

[Mastaq]

From all the testing I've done with JDizzle's recent list I can't help but wonder.. Is there something better than 3 Duress? At times I would draw Duress and wish it was something else. I'm just picking up the deck. So if there is something I'm missing please point it out to me. 

[CapitanJon]

From all the testing I've done with JDizzle's recent list I can't help but wonder.. Is there something better than 3 Duress? At times I would draw Duress and wish it was something else. I'm just picking up the deck. So if there is something I'm missing please point it out to me.

I've found myself wanting to find room for the last duress maybe it's just metagame differences but pulling the trinisphere out of my opponent's hand on my turn 1 vs. stax seems pretty good, also when you cast bargain being able to duress your opponent actually just wins the game on the spot.

Living Wish is ALWAYS a threat now because against Control, it gets Xantid Swarm and there's always Dark Confidant, which is the nuts. Best yet, it gets land, which allows you to stabilize against control. Very often, I've had my Wishes countered because of the fear that I have access to more mana, which allows me to do more things before control can find enough answers.

Welder is an interesting card in the deck. It's more than just a way to get back Belcher. It screws around with opposing boards, recurs Chromatic Spheres, etc. It is usually one of my favorite things to resolve, which makes it so much more than a conditional threat.

i couldn't agree more.... JD and I discussed the deck for hours when he came home for our Jet tournament.  Living wish is actually sometimes just as much of a threat as belcher in this deck. 
@JD: my favorite welder trick involves Memory Jar

[MuzzonoAmi]

I've tested both of these decks fairly extensively (it's been my primary deck for about 2 months now), and there are some things I'd definately like to chime in on:

1. Blue
Additional lands increase the rate of bad belches significantly. I get crapped on enough belching with Taiga in the deck that I never want more than 2 lands MD. So I am stuck with artifact mana to support the color, and even with a 39th mana source that MAKES blue, you are still significantly more vulnerable to color screw, and you make yourself more susceptible to Null Rod and Chalice, since they can completely shut you off from a color. Tinker has lost me almost as many games as Spoils of the Vault, both by being countered and by leaving me without adequate resources (or putting me in a position where my opponent can easily cut me off from what I need to win), which is just unacceptable. This leaves Ancestral as the reason for butchering the already tight mana for running Blue, and while it, like Tinker, is randomly incredible, it's dead weight when I'd rather draw a tutor or mana source alot of the time. And "you can draw both off Ancestral" isn't a counter argument, because now you've invested an additional card and an off-color mana (which means an artifact) in getting them.

2. Gamble

The card is just too inconsistent to be run in a competitive combo deck not explicitly designed to exploit it. I tried it, I really did, but for every time it got me Lotus, or set me up to Weld, it threw away Lotus, or Will, or Channel, or Baragin or some other critical card that either throughly complicated the process of winning or simply cost me the game.

[pyr0ma5ta]

This thread turned into a flamefest awful quick.

Um, I'm tempted to side with JD just because he's JD, but I think his points are extremely valid.  Your artifacts are all good, and most of them sac for mana already.  Only a few of them stay in play after being used (5 moxes, sol ring, crypt, vault), so having something to pitch to Tinker is somewhat unlikely.  What if you pitch your only permanent mana and your Tinker gets forced? 

Ancestral is obviously amazing, and so is brainstorm, but we're not trying to set up storm here.  We're trying to get to 7 mana, find a 4-of, resolve it, and turn it on.  Oh, and not have lands in the deck.  I played 7-land belcher at Regionals (standard format) a few months ago to 5-3-1, and I modified a Japanese build with 6 lands.  I added an extra land for my own sanity because I didn't like how often I mulled, and it helped incredibly.  Of course, the ability to run 4 Chrome Mox helped a lot, and that's not going to happen in Vintage.  So I can understand the sentiment of adding an extra land and correspondingly the best draw spell in the game, but the mana base is just WEAK.  It's so weak you often just mulligan yourself into going first game 2.  Don't wreck it if you want to actually win every so often.

If you want to trade speed for consistency by adding the 3rd land, okay, but at least make it a relevant land that actually taps for colors you care about.  I just don't think that it can be correct in any way.

Edit: Is Chrome mox relevant in 2-land Belcher?  It seems like it can help your mana problems a lot and it's flexible enough to produce the mana you want a lot of the time.  And it's permanent!

[Komatteru]

The imprint on Chrome Mox is a big problem.  You don't want to have to imprint a Ritual to cast a Ritual, or a Welder to cast a Welder.  The only things you'd really be imprinting are ESG and Duress, as everything else is pretty needed.  Duress is a 3-of and you really don't need any more green mana sources, permanent or not.  The deck doesn't draw cards, and it doesn't want to throw away two cards to make 1 mana.

[Joblin Velder]

This thread turned into a flamefest awful quick.

Um, I'm tempted to side with JD just because he's JD

This is exactly why I haven't really bothered to contribute to this discussion despite having piloted this deck for the last year to fairly good finishes.

[Ferrismonk]

There has been a lot of talk about the maindeck, and a LOT of talk about the possible 4th color.  But what I haven't heard a lot of talk about is the sideboard.  For reference, here are the top placing sideboards (with differences in bold):

JD @ STG:Chicago            Kyle leith@beanie exchange
1 Dark Confidant              2 Dark Confidant
1 Elvish Scrapper          1 Goblin Welder
1 Eternal Witness             1 Eternal Witness
1 Uktabi Orangutan          1 Uktabi Orangutan
4 Xantid Swarm                2 Xantid Swarm
                                      2 Overload
1 Artifact Mutation       1 Echoing Truth
2 Naturalize                     1 Naturalize
1 Oxidize                         1 Oxidize (one main)
1 City Of Brass                  1 City of Brass
1 City Of Traitors           1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Tolarian Academy           1 Tolarian Academy

It is obvious that the functional differences between the two are relatively minor, but does anyone have any suggestions?  Personally I've never wished for the Eternal Witness or Elvish Scrapper.  I almost always wish for the City of Brass (or equivalent), the Dark Confident, or for the Phyrexian Negator (which I choose to include) for more pressure.  Have any of you found the Witness/Scrapper to be underpowered?  Does anyone miss the Negator?  The crypt seems rather random to me, but I can see where it might be nice (especially if you are bastardizing your artifacts with Tinker).

As to Duress, it's a fickle bitch.  I don't like wasting my resources on something that doesn't accelerate my game plan, but it has saved me many games.  A thought that I've been tossing around is running 3 Dark Confidants instead of the Duress.  This serves a similar purpose to duress in that it helps negate your opponent's answers, the card advantage is amazing, and it also acts as an alternate win condition along with hardcasting ESG and wishing for Negator.  Has anybody dallied with running the confidant main?

[pyr0ma5ta]

ROFL.  21 posts on TMD and already quoted in a sig. 

Also.  I have no idea honestly about how this deck plays, but what's your plan against resolved Chalice for 0 or 1?

So if you're on the draw, you're in big big trouble, right?  And because you don't have draw, you can't just draw into a Hurkyl's/Rebuild/Welder, you're stuck with whatever you kept and your draw steps and tutors? 

And if I'm reading your argument correctly JD, the biggest problem with the mana base isn't actually getting to 7 colorless to hardcast a belcher and use it, but to get the correct colors of mana to actually cast the spells in your hand?  If this is the case, I think Chrome Mox is at least worth a second look, but you've probably already tested it and not liked it.

[Klep]

If this is the case, I think Chrome Mox is at least worth a second look, but you've probably already tested it and not liked it.

Like JDizzle said, Belcher can't draw cards very easily, and so it can't really afford the two-for-one.  Most every spell that would give you a color of mana you need were you to imprint it you would be better off just casting anyway.

[tidal kraken]

There has been a lot of talk about the maindeck, and a LOT of talk about the possible 4th color.  But what I haven't heard a lot of talk about is the sideboard.  For reference, here are the top placing sideboards (with differences in bold):

JD @ STG:Chicago            Kyle leith@beanie exchange
1 Dark Confidant              2 Dark Confidant
1 Elvish Scrapper          1 Goblin Welder
1 Eternal Witness             1 Eternal Witness
1 Uktabi Orangutan          1 Uktabi Orangutan
4 Xantid Swarm                2 Xantid Swarm
                                      2 Overload
1 Artifact Mutation       1 Echoing Truth
2 Naturalize                     1 Naturalize
1 Oxidize                         1 Oxidize (one main)
1 City Of Brass                  1 City of Brass
1 City Of Traitors           1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Tolarian Academy           1 Tolarian Academy

It is obvious that the functional differences between the two are relatively minor, but does anyone have any suggestions?  Personally I've never wished for the Eternal Witness or Elvish Scrapper.  I almost always wish for the City of Brass (or equivalent), the Dark Confident, or for the Phyrexian Negator (which I choose to include) for more pressure.  Have any of you found the Witness/Scrapper to be underpowered?  Does anyone miss the Negator?  The crypt seems rather random to me, but I can see where it might be nice (especially if you are bastardizing your artifacts with Tinker).

As to Duress, it's a fickle bitch.  I don't like wasting my resources on something that doesn't accelerate my game plan, but it has saved me many games.  A thought that I've been tossing around is running 3 Dark Confidants instead of the Duress.  This serves a similar purpose to duress in that it helps negate your opponent's answers, the card advantage is amazing, and it also acts as an alternate win condition along with hardcasting ESG and wishing for Negator.  Has anybody dallied with running the confidant main?

I would never cut scrapper. Scrapper gives you an answer to the otherwise problematic null rod. Yo can land grant up a bayou and cast living wish off bayou and elvish spirit guide (or in the rare instance, the other land). I might cut eternal witness because it hasn't been performing well fo me in testing. I'm not really sure what I'd run in it's place thhough, though negator could work.

[Lucentspirit]

Michael Simister first played Belcher (Simister invented this deck) at a Columbus Ohio tournament in Feb of 2004.   The Germans saw the decklist and won a Duelmen with it a month or two later.   

Simister went on to pwn people at Origins and gencon that year playing it.  He dissappeared from Type one shortly thereafter.  He is Lucenspirit on these boards if someone cares to find his old posts on the deck (he wrote quite long posts on it, so they are worth digging up).   

I sold my cards to feed myself while at college and devoted more time to FFXI online. I do however, still check the manadrain boards and play proxy games when the opportunity arises.

Anyway...... Almost anything you ever wanted to know about 2-land belcher with a blue splash can be found in a 7 page post (http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=15329.0) created when belcher was still new.

For anyone without the heart to go back and read I'll go over a few things from my own experiences with the deck.

The deck's biggest weakness is it's manabase

Adding a 3rd land helps stabilize the deck's manabase but will often cause a belch to "fizzle" or require an additional turn or two to fish the 3rd land out

In a match-up where speed is your best stategy (against decks will null rod for example) you should run with 2 land

On the other hand, I always ran with 3 or more land in the deck post sideboard against control heavy decks like Tog and 4CC. These decks will likely counter your first and sometimes second attemt to develope a mana base or resolve a threat. This gives you additional time to weed lands out of the deck. The additional land also reduces the risk of a control deck shutting down your manabase entirely (which, from my experience, is usually the best strategy for a control deck against belcher)
 

[Gabethebabe]

JD kinda likes his Dark Confidant in the board. Is Wish for Dark confidant not kinda slow? If you wish for him most of the time, I´d rather cast a Night´s Whisper than Living Wish.

Has anyone tried Night´s Whisper in the deck, replacing the Wish? Drawing something NOW seems pretty good. The clear problem of NW is that you can´t get yourself a land and you can´t get yourself a SB answer to e.g. Null Rod.

But I think that if there is any card that *could* be added to the maindeck, that has synergy with the gameplan of Belcher and that draws/Tutors cards, then Night´s Whisper is a serious candidate.

It probably has been tried and found weak, but is it weaker than Living Wish? People who don´t like their duresses, would NW be worth a shot?

[Whatever Works]

Has anyone tested multiple MAINDECK Dark Confidant's??? I recently have been testing with 2-3 Maindeck, and I have been very happy with them... They obviously can slow the deck down a little bit. However, when its in play you tend to win the long game.

I am not saying it should be run, or that its the best thing going. I am just throwing it out there as a neat long lasting cantrip.

[Komatteru]

I thought about maindeck Confidants, but I couldn't figure out what to take out.  Duress and Living Wish are like the only candidates to remotely consider.  You really do need to have something to disrupt your opponent, so Duress is still needed (I guess you could try going down to 2).  I wouldn't cut Living Wish.  Most often, it goes for a land (usually City of Traitors), because a lot of the mana in the deck is one-shot, so it's good to turn some of it into permanent mana.  That's why I use the City.  I can turn BG from an ESG and a Dark Rit into 2 mana that sticks around from turn to turn.

I think he'd be good in the maindeck in a control heavy environment, but, then again, I'd play Long in a control environment.  With Stax constituting a significant portion of the midwest meta, paying for your spells through Chalices, SoRs, and Wastelands is a much bigger problem than having spells to cast.  In the Stax matches, I found that Confidant was really amazing in specific circumstances.  You need to have like a Welder or something to stall out for a while, otherwise you just lose to Smokestacks.  It was winning the games that it came down in, but I only brought it out when we were both in topdeck mode, for instance, or Stax was missing key cards (Stack, Crucible, etc.).

[bebe]

I played Belcher at the time that Lucienspirit first started posting his thoughts on the deck. My list very quickly evolved into one quite similar to his. Now the meta has indeed changed considerably from those days but I never did fear wastelands.

Draw is obviously an area that one looks at. But I have to say that I cannot imagine running the deck without Living Wish. Apart from the lands that you can bring in to acccelerate the deck there are a few creatures that I loved in the sideboard, mainly Swarm, Welder and Scrapper but now I can see Confidant taking a spot.

I lost games mostly to Rods and counters. I imagine that this is still the case although Rods may be replaced with Needles these days and still create problems. The thing of it is that you really want to go off quickly - multiple activations or too much time setting up can spell disaster. Belcher is pure combo with very little disruption available and often that not in your hand when needed. I first played the deck at Ontario Vintage and ran into countered Land Grants and numerous Rods ( fish was quite popular then ). I'm surprised that no one has mentioned how much of a two edged sword Land Grant can be. Also as JD has pointed out, once the game goes on to the point that your opponent has counters in hand the match up becomes much more difficult.

I'm think that JDs build is close to optimum for todays N. American meta. I would need to test the deck again to be sure. Belcher is not a deck for the faint hearted.

[pyr0ma5ta]

Magic is a game of imperfect information, and the moment you reveal to your opponent your plans and hand, you could possibly just lose.  Fortunately, Belcher has the ability to just overwhelm your opponent with threats in the first 2 turns and just win as a result.  It's a dangerous deck, and it's fun to goldfish