TPS and the impact of Dark Confidant

[Cr0v4x]

Hi everybody,

I have lately placed third with TPS. It was a UBR list (1 Gifts, Recoup, Darksteel Colossus). In that tourney I didn't play any Dark Confidants as I didn't own any at that point of time and wasn't able to borrow a complete playset. Now several lists have come up on the internet from several people (i.e. the list from Marco Kiewit placing first in Eindhoven but as there was only little participation we shouldn't really regard that list as a statement of how powerful Dark Confidants are in a TPS-list). I've been working for a while now on a build with 4 Dark Confidants. The additional draw is just so amazing that I am not willing to go down with this number. First of all I'd like to present my build to you:

// Ulrich Büttner: "Strictly Confidantial"

// Lands
    4  Polluted Delta
    4  Underground Sea
    1  Tolarian Academy
    2  Island
    2 [UG] Swamp
    1  Bloodstained Mire

// Creatures
    4  Dark Confidant

// Spells
    1  Tinker
    1  Timetwister
    1  Rebuild
    1  Mox Pearl
    1  Demonic Tutor
    4  Dark Ritual
    1  Sol Ring
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Mox Ruby
    4  Duress
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Mox Emerald
    1  Memory Jar
    1  Mana Vault
    1  Mana Crypt
    1  Lotus Petal
    1  Mystical Tutor
    4  Brainstorm
    1  Mind's Desire
    4  Force of Will
    2  Tendrils of Agony
    1  Ancestral Recall
    1  Yawgmoth's Will
    1  Yawgmoth's Bargain
    1  Vampiric Tutor
    1  Necropotence
    1  Black Lotus
    1  Hurkyl's Recall
    1  Cabal Ritual

First I'll sum up all the advantages Dark Confidants bring you:

1. One additional card each turn which makes aou a lot less dependant from Necroptence, Yawgmoth's Bargain, Timetwister, Wheel of Fortune (which I personally extremely dislike) and Memory Jar. You don't really have to tutor for these cards but can just lay down a Dark Confidant and start drawing extra cards. It has happened to me several times that playing a Memory Jar or Timetwister just wasn't enough to get the storm count up high enough and I think that these extra cards help me to get there.

2. With the Dark Confidant you have a beatstick with power 2 which is actually pretty solid in the current meta as there aren't a whole lot of decks dominating playing a whole lot of creatures. Confidant actually only sucks when playing against Oath which is a very tough matchup. You will have to sideboard them out I believe as the actual SB-tech - Engineered Plague - isn't really supported well when starting to drop creatures ... But let's get back to the aspect of Dark Confidant being a beatstick. If you play Confidant on Turn 1 which is pretty common in T1 when holding him in hand this is a card your opponent has to cope with as he might just fall back too much be ever recover from the cardadvantage Dark Confidant creates for you. Then you have a creatures that can beat your opponent down for  several turns. So when you are in turn 3 or 4 Dark Confidant has beaten your opponent either 2 or 3 times and your opponent is down to 14 or 12 (I simply assume that the opponent will have lost 2 life due to fetchlands and/or Force of Will/Vampiric Tutor/Imperial Seal or whatsoever). That makes it much easier for you to actually combo out as you don't need 8 Spells + Tendrils but only 5 or 6 Spells + Tendrils.

Now we have to look at the disadvanteges of playing Dark Confidants. It's pretty much written on the card itself that your mana curve should be very low which isn't really the case in this deck including cards like Mind's Desire, Force of Will, Memory Jar, Yawgmoth's Bargain, 2 Tendrils. You might probably cut the Memory Jar and the Tinker to probably include like 2 Sensei's Divining Tops which should really neglect the lifeloss. Nevertheless I don't think that the lifeloss is that terrible (of course I've already lost a couple of games due to Dark Confidant but I have won even more games because of the cardadvantage built up by using this card). Furthermore you can simply play Tendrils for with a storm count at 3 or 4 just to survive a little longer keeping in mind that Dark Confidant is still able to beat your opponent.

I hope I have explained my reasons for playing Dark Confidants well and we can discuss it's inclusion in TPS and the impact of the inclusion on the maindeck and sideboard for a while.

[Hi-Val]

How is Confidant better than Night's Whisper in TPS? Mike Lydon raised this issue in a recent article. Confidant does draw more cards, but you have to invest two turns on a one-toughness glassjaw guy to put you into the same cards that Whisper does all the time. Also, midcombo the Whisper is still quite good, whereas Confidant is bad to draw when you are actually trying to win.

[Methuselahn]

where's Bob #5 aka Library of Alexandria?  That, in my opinion, is the card that Confidant should really be compared to.

[yodoblec]

I agree with methuselahn on the LoA thing. Seeing Bob as the same thing it just shows he's not that great.

[Methuselahn]

I agree with methuselahn on the LoA thing. Seeing Bob as the same thing it just shows he's not that great.

I find it funny that you would say that considering your sig:

Thug:

'Cause winning on turn 4 does the same thing as winning on turn 2, it results in a game win.

Thug, or Koen's deck actually uses LoA in his TT Confidant list, which is somewhat similar to the above list.    The fact that this list uses Dark Ritual and not Mana Drain is the most interesting and important thing here, I believe.  And for the record, I wasn't saying that Library was good or bad, but merely a better comparison in function.

[gamermk]

As you say the Oath matchup is already tough so Dark Confident making that worse isn't that bad.

I'm more worried about you dropping tinker and jar for 2 tops. With Dark Confident taking up the spots of immediate draw spells I would think that you might be more reliant on a draw 7 mid-combo. The obvious flip side of the coin is that with Dark Confident hitting for 4 damage or so then a cheap storm count enhancer like a top might be wiser as well.

Regardless, I think your testing has already found Dark Confident to be useful.

Edit:
Have you tried using Chain of Vapour instead of Hurkyl's Recall or Rebuild?

[Outlaw]

One of the greatest things that Dark Confidant does for the combo player is reduce the number of spells needed to go off every turn after the one that he is casted (assuming he'll swing in, but who plays creatures?). Simply, Bob swinging makes a long game shorter.