TT Confidant Control

[ozimek]

Basically, my question is: How would you deal with an aggro metagame with this deck, or would you just not take it there? Picture decks like Affinity, Stompy, Threshold, R/G, Sligh plus B/W in many forms, and add one of each U/W control, Oath, Dragon to the list. I know the solution to that metagame is Storm combo, but for the sake of the argument, which adjustments would you make to your deck, or none at all?

If I understand you correctly, your main concern is targeted removal, (Swords, Lightning Bolt, Bounce) because it both hampers your ability to gain control by removing your draw engine, and your ability to win (aka. not loose aka. Paltz).

Some tech that has been tested in early Welder based decks is Lightning Greaves. In theory it is perfect for this deck, because it can protect both the Confidant and the Angel. It has two huge problems though, and both are related to speed:
1) Equipping is sorcery speed, so your creatures can be taken out by most removal in response.
2) The mana cost. You already have a lot of two-mana cards competing for your resources in the early turns. Confidant itself, Mana Leak, and Mana Drain.

Also, if you succeed in protecting the Confidant with Greaves in the early and mid game, your opponent is likely to have a huge stockpile of removal in hand for the Angel when she enters.


Another option is to board in (or leave in) Duress in these matches. You would be able to snag a removal spell now and then, but it will too often force you to delay the Confidant for a round, or simply "miss" when you see a hand consisting of creatures and lands.


A third option is to add a few more copies of Misdirection. This should work wonders against targeted removal in creature based decks, as they will likely have an "Innocent bystander" on the board to direct the removal at. There are more efficient (in respect to Card Advantage) alternatives to Misdirection, (Divert, Intervene, Meddle etc.) but these are probably too narrow.

All in all, Misdirection seems like the best solution to me.

/Jan

[vroman]

lightning greaves is unplayable. gets hosed by null rod. doesnt stop instant speed removal. dead card w/o creature to equip. if anything, board Kira great glass spinner

[Thug]

With the amount of removal present in a mostly aggro metagame, using Confidants as your only only draw engine is often not good enough. (I understand that I speak from a perspective that is probably different from yours, because I'm used to a very different local metagame. That may lead to a different understanding of the deck and its workings. But still...)

What decks actually play lot of removal? FCG is the only deck I can think of that has about 8 answers to a Confidant.

I actually think this deck is good in an Aggro metagame, but then again I don't rate aggro that high, so this doesn't really say anything.
Fact is that you should be able to find Tinker before dying to beats, this means you can ignore about 20 cards your opponent plays. An opponent needs to get real lucky to resolve an answer to Angel, since it's the only thing you need to counter.

---

What's more scary are control decks with acces to Darkblast.
If you know your opponent has a Darkblast you have to make sure you get in front before dropping Confidant, which is not always possible.

Koen

[zeus-online]

I think FoF is somewhat of an auto-inclusion in a deck like this....its one of the best card-drawers in the game, helps you search for stuff you need and gives you card quality and quantity.
Other then that, its a nice thing to drain into....!
I'm not sure how well scrying's work in your deck, but you really seem to be missing some "bomby draw".

How about personal tutor? Finds will, walk and tinker....but dosnt fetch most of your silver bullets. pitches to FoW (just had to say it )

You could play with 5 tutors (Mystical, vamp, seal, personal, demonic) But that might be too much, have you tested with extra tutors?

/Zeus

Edit: I agree on you with Will....people seems to think of it as only "good" if it actually kills the opponent! I've often played it just to replay a few key-cards...like will'ing up ancestral, duress + Strip mine, which puts my opponent so far behind that the game is practically won.

[Cross]

I just got back from winning the Myriad games mox tourney with this deck. It was a small event, but it was five rounds; we played out the top 8 completely, and I went undefeated in matches all day.

I'll probably have more deck analysis when I have the time to type up my decklist, or fix it in workstation and paste it here.

Some things of note-

I ran two mainboard pithing needles, and I cannot see running less than that. 2 or 3 is probably the right number. This card makes welder look stupid, and on top of already having an excellent manabase in this deck you can shut down strip recursion. This card was definitely mvp all day.

I ran a mindslaver as a second tinker target, and did not use it once. A platinum angel would not have been anymore useful, nor was there any situation all day where plats would be better than dsc. This slot is definitely being changed out.

I'm not sure that a secondary win condition beyond confidant or colossus beats is necesarry.

In testing mana leaks were good against stax, but beyond that awful. I played duress in its place and it was amazing.

Sensei's top feels less and less useful. Being a lucksack/having the balls to play without it is the way to go.

Most fittingly the final damage of the tournament was dealt by a pair of confidants swinging past a lone blocker.

[fitz712]

congrats on the mox tourny  what did the list look like? you said slaver was not that good in the deck what would you change it to?

[Cross]

Mana:
1 Black Lotus
5 Mox
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
4 Island
1 Library
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand

Creatures
1 Darksteel Colossus
4 Dark Confidant

Spells
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
3 Duress
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
1 Sensei’s Top
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Pithing Needle
1 Rushing River
1 Yawg’s
1 Mindslaver

So like my version of the combo deck I changed a lot of things that did not seem to work for me. If they work for you then play them.

Platinum Angel is one of the things contested. I really don’t think this is a better tinker target than colossus. Colossus wins games; platinum angel saves you from losing, but may not win the game. I was never put in a situation where plats would have been better, or would have saved me from losing the game. I changed this to mindslaver because I felt at the time that the deck needed a non-creature based win condition. I never ended up using the slaver, but I think that there needs to be something in this slot that can’t be removed via swords. The issue with slaver was that there were few times when you can tinker and activate slaver in the same turn, and without welder you can just pitch it to thirst and then welder it and activate.

Pithing Needle, is definitely the mvp of the deck. I took out a few basics, and added some nonbasics, so adding another needle was worth it for protecting the already strong manabase. This is easily the best answer to a field of unknown decks, as it is excellent against almost every deck in the format. Also, in a deck that runs tinker-colossus as the main win condition it does not make any sense not to run this. People still play welder, and it answers this and lots of other things like waterfront bouncer that deal with colossus.

Misdirection I dropped fairly quickly. It can nab you an ancestral every now and then, or protect your bomb, but it does not stop the best win conditions in the format: tinker, gifts, yawg’s and stax’ lock pieces.

Mana Leak was good in testing some times, but most of the times it was trashy. It catches people off guard a lot, and it’s excellent against stax. But all too often they have the mana, or you don’t have the mox for the first turn leak. I switched this to duress, and it was the best change to the deck that I could discern. What sells me on duress is that it pre-empts swords to plowshares. Sticking your neck out on a tinker is unnecessary with duress. Duress also comes down on the first turn, and is retarded against combo decks. It is also easier to duress someone and tinker in the same turn than it is to tinker with leak back up.

Thirst for Knowledge was originally a three-of, and I added the fourth. Thirst is the best draw engine in the format, and there is no reason not to run it in a deck that wins via tinker-colossus. There are many things you can run in place of this, but for the life of me I can not understand why.

Confidant number four was added for much the same reason. It doesn’t pitch colossus, but it does serve for two.

In a blue-based deck that runs artifacts it seems like you would want to run academy. With more needles in the deck wasteland becomes less and less of an issue. Plus it’s academy.

Mana crypt was not in the original version. This is amazing at facilitating first turn tinkers, which I like to do against some decks. I know thug does not, and I will avoid doing it if I can, but sometimes you need to, especially against oath, ichorid and goblins.

Rushing river is a better catch-all than echoing truth imho. I like to be able to bounce opposing colossi without bouncing my own. There are situations where either is better, but I prefer river. I have a truth sideboard though, as it is useful against a lot of things.