French Ichorid, and also Black Lotus versus Lotus Petal

[Neonico]

First off, i was toying with dredge in vintage allmost since Ravnica came online and i played the meandeck ichorid deck with minor tweaks and piloted it to a top 4 finish in the french biggest tourney (Clichy, 83 players, sanctionned event). The list i came up was close of Smennen's one, the only missing part was i didnt maindeck chalices.

My loss of the day were against an unpowered UGW threshold deck (Cant fight  turn 3 Thresholded mystical enforcer with the hands i kept) and Merchant.dec (French variation of gif, designed and piloted soooo well by klu)

I won against Bazaar Madness, Ruba stax, Keeper, Belcher, Intuition Tendrils (1/4 final)

Putrid Imp, Imperial Seal, Chrome Mox, Underground Sea, Ancestral Recall, Darkblast, and Strip Mine

Sea -> Ancestral
Chrome imprinting Putrid Imp -> Imperial Seal -> Bazaar

10 turn clocks against CS are stupid and don't work.  Bazaar and some mana denial does, however, work.  You need to ancestral before imperial seal to get your bazaar.  You can't out-topdeck CS, but you can force your bazaar to be on top of your deck.  Turn 2 I would Strip if they are underdeveloped or Bazaar if you're already in the hole.  Any way you look at it a 5 card hand if they Force your Ancestral is ugly for CS.  Fun hand, but not ideal against CS.  I'd rather have Bazaar and a Golgari Troll in my opening hand.  Much stronger...

From my experience with the deck, I wouldnt play this hand like that at all. A spell like ancestral/Brainstorm is allways better as a Bazaar backup during upkeep to keep on dredging (I did it once during the tournament, for a 30 cards dredge, average is 20 22 cards in the yard).

My play would be Sea -> Seal -> Bazaar pass
Turn 2 Bazaar, Imp, EOT Bazaar activation
Turn 3, Activating bazaar during upkeep and back it up to dredge with ancestral, depending of what dredge cards i get from the 2 bazaar activations  and perhaps play a goul from yard.
Turn 4, i should have enough to do 12 damages + my imp and goul or being lethal turn 5 with therapies backup

From my experience against CS (i tested alot because my teammate played CS at the tournament) A spell like Brainstorm/tral is also required with bazaar and Troll/Stinkweed to make a perfect hand. It allows the turn 3 silliest dredge you can have and a turn 4-5 kill.

Ho and i think that imprinting a Discard engine against a deck that can counter your bazaar tutor isnt a good thing to do against a Control deck. You need to have several threats (and your threats are your discard enablers) to fight force of will if you dont have the uncounterable one (Bazaar).

One last note on the Entomb/thug war.... Entomb isnt a black creature. Period. If entomb is good, its instead of another draw/tutor spell, not instead of a dredgeable ichorid-recuring card. I only tutored a dreadgeable creature once (And it was the thug, i needed a card to recure ichorid after a big tormod's crypt) during my 2 test weeks and the tourney. Thats why i dont see entomb as a strong card in the deck.

[Pitlord]

Congrats on the finish Neonico, and you seem to have a lot of good points. The one thing I question is that you played without chalice. Did you ever really miss the disruption, especially disruption that is great in a deck with practically no spells?

I also agree that imprinting a discard outlet doesn't seem like the right choice in retrospect, as those basically make uip all of your threats. However, I also see the other side, saying that mox is a good source of mana that you need, and putrid is probably the worst card in the hand. Overall, I would say imprinting isn't right, but might work OK.

I also agree that entomb can't be compared to Thug because entomb doesn't actually get lots of cards in the yard, and doesn't remove to ichorid. Removing a tutor MAY be possible for entomb, but not a thug. I learned that when Duby said he was removing ichorids, because we mained the 2nd D-blast over thug.

[Neonico]

NO i wasnt playing without chalice at all. In fact, i came up with a close list but without chalice, and it was the missing part i couldn't figure (Im more a constructed player and legacy player than vintage, i dont see some strong cards like smennen does)

My list was :
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
1 Underground Sea
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox

4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Darkblast
1 Golgari Thug

4 Ichorid
4 Ashen Ghoul

4 Putrid Imp
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Careful Study
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Balance
1 Crop Rotation
1 Time Walk

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Strip Mine

SB:
3 Chain of Vapor
3 Null Rod
3 Pithing Needle
3 Root Maze
3 Stifle

If the tournament was today, ill do - Balance - Walk for + 2 Chain of Vapor and i would remove Null rod from sideboard for 3 ReB (Tinker is my worst nightmare) and 4th rootmaze. (i figured this card to be a strong null rod against combo because of its 1 mana cost)

The other deck i won against was a combo oath.

In fact, chalices are the great part, so is rootmaze. The metagame seems to slowly switch to combo again in france and Chalice/maze won me 2 matches, against Belcher and Tendril. Its also really strong against control (Merchant/gift and slaver) and any tormod's crypt hate.

In the hand we speack of, the mox is totally useless, except to discard one more card to first bazaar activation and perhaps get some more interesting business.

One last thing : I noticed during my playtest that Emerald > Lotus, just because of Rootmaze of the board.

[Mantis]

Your deck lacks Black Lotus but does play Lotus Petal? I'm confused.

[Neonico]

Yep. Just before the tournament, i removed lotus (Far from being optimal, you dont want to chalice for one) for the Emerald. Petal and chrome are accepted to be good mana source in the deck.

[Harlequin]

Yep. Just before the tournament, i removed lotus (Far from being optimal, you dont want to chalice for one) for the Emerald. Petal and chrome are accepted to be good mana source in the deck.

Is that a joke?

How is Lotus petal, better than black lotus???  WORSE case you take some extra mana burn.  Are you really that tight where you can't afford 2 points of POSSIBLE mana burn?

Why didn't you cut Petal for Emerald?

[Neonico]

Its not a joke. Black lotus isnt needed in the deck, its toooo much situationnal (Just good for balance/walk, but any mox is ok for that). The only spells you want to play turn one are Root maze and chalice at 0 game 2. Why would i take 2 mana burn if not needed ? I lost my semi final because i took 2 points with city of brass (Hardcast titan + Tinker colossus + walk on turn 3) its not to take 2 free damages. No really, lotus isnt needed. 2 friends of mine did top 16 with unpowered version of the deck and its ok.

Also petal and chrome mox are absolutly necessary to the deck. Chrome mox is a permanent black mana source, needed for gouls, and i would never change lotus petal to anything because its a raimbow source, mainly black for goul recursion.

I also agree that imprinting a discard outlet doesn't seem like the right choice in retrospect, as those basically make uip all of your threats. However, I also see the other side, saying that mox is a good source of mana that you need, and putrid is probably the worst card in the hand. Overall, I would say imprinting isn't right, but might work OK.

I dont pretend that imprinting Imp is a bad play. Its a bad play as long as youre not sure to have active bazaar for 2 turns. Especially now that CS maindeck Strip Mine, i wouldnt imprint it before turn 2 (3 if you need to tutor for bazaar).

And Ancestral should allways be played after the first bazaar activation during upkeep. Thats allways how i play against any control deck. ANd except during my semi final (Where i did it with brainstorm + Ancestral, got my brainstorm Forced) i allways won from that play. In fact, i lost the semi because i dredge no other dredge cards, only chalices, blue cards and tutors (and because my opponent topdecked titan with enough mana to hardcast+Will+tinker+walk the same turn).

In that hand, the worst card is mox, not imp.

[Disburden]

I am sorry, maybe I missed something with how lotus petal is better than black lotus. If you need mana Lotus is clearly better than Petal. It helps you cast brainstorms, Null Rods and Pithing needles in one turn, where as Petal is a one spell shot. Also if you are worrying about burning for two off a black lotus than why aren't you killing anyone by turn 4-5 at the latest anyway? Burning off a Lotus really should not be any issue. Petal better than Lotus really can't be logical in my opinion.

[Dante]

Its not a joke. Black lotus isnt needed in the deck, its toooo much situationnal (Just good for balance/walk, but any mox is ok for that). The only spells you want to play turn one are Root maze and chalice at 0 game 2. Why would i take 2 mana burn if not needed ? I lost my semi final because i took 2 points with city of brass (Hardcast titan + Tinker colossus + walk on turn 3) its not to take 2 free damages. No really, lotus isnt needed. 2 friends of mine did top 16 with unpowered version of the deck and its ok.

Also petal and chrome mox are absolutly necessary to the deck. Chrome mox is a permanent black mana source, needed for gouls, and i would never change lotus petal to anything because its a raimbow source, mainly black for goul recursion.

One time, my two friends were drunk and got into a car accident and weren't wearing seat belts and they were fine, so not wearing a seat belt and driving drunk is ok.  <hopefully people's sarcasm meter is working>

Lotus is better than Lotus Petal.  It's not even close.  It lets you cast multiple Ancestral/Careful Study/Brainstorm in one turn.  It lets you cast Darkblast multiple times (with brainstorm, or bazaar) in a turn.  Every once in awhile, you may take a damage or two, shit happens, but 3 mana is better than 1 mana, always has been, always will.

You have Null Rod in your sideboard.  Land, Lotus Petal allows you to cast null rod turn 1.  Land, Black Lotus allows for Null Rod AND multiple Ancestral/root maze/chain of vapor/brainstorm/careful study.

You haven't presented one good reason why Lotus Petal would be better except for the possibility of mana burn every now and then (because there isn't one)

Please drop this argument now.

Dante

[Brapp]

Some friends over on the SCG forums were talking about how Black Lotus really hadn't been that great during testing. I haven't tested enough to be sure. I think the mana burn factor was their main argument as well. Also, they felt that truly a better card could go there. Maybe another tutor or something? Like I said, I don't know what the right call is because I haven't tested.

Also, a list over there ran Nether Shadow. Free creatures are nice, so I thought it might be a possibility. If anything, it's more fuel for Ichorid. However, I doubt there's room for it in this deck.

[Disburden]

Please drop this argument now.

Dante

[Smmenen]

Here, I'll resolve this argument for you:

I designed this deck.  Black Lotus goes into it as it goes into *every single vintage deck ever created*.  End of story. 
Any argument against lotus is flawed. 

[Neonico]

Some friends over on the SCG forums were talking about how Black Lotus really hadn't been that great during testing. I haven't tested enough to be sure. I think the mana burn factor was their main argument as well.

OK sooooo. First its funny, but I'm not alone to think that lotus isn't needed in the deck. If several people who tested the deck feel the same, perhaps its for a good reason

Second, i perhaps play the deck the bad way but every example you gave me seems to be bad examples of how to play the deck. From my playtest and tournament experience, from how i feel the deck runs, from how i play it (the wrong way perhaps, smennen you can tell me if I'm right or not) you allmost NEVER WANT to cast multiple ancestral/Brainstorm, especially on turn one (Because as i allready stated, its better as a dredge more spell after bazaar activation.

Here is my gameplan with the deck and you'll see why lotus petal isn't worst than lotus in allmost any case.

First turn, i want to play 3 things : Rootmaze, Bazaar or bazaar tutor Chalice for 0 ( 1-2 Marna, petal + land do the job). How Black lotus helps me better than Emerald/Lotus petal to play those spells ? It does not, emerald/petal allows the same plays.
Second turn EOT 1 Bazaar activation, dredge the draw step, land drop
3rd turn, Bazaar activation DURING UPKEEP, followed by Tral/Brainstorm DURING UPKEEP and dredge the draw phase. Black lotus isn't good for anything else than burning in this play (simply because i would allmost never keep a hand with 3 blue drawers, just because you'll never get enough to dredge in the yard after the first one, do not forget that tral/Brainstorm don't get discard effect, dredge cards are in hand)

And friends of mine told me to keep it at least to recurse ghouls. Even that (recursing 3 ghouls in a turn) never happened as far as i tested. (And if this happen, you should have enough in the yard to win allready)

Mana burn seems to be nothing for you, but some games are really long and every burn/City of brass damage etc can count.

OK, those are my arguments, perhaps the worst you ever read, but I'm mainly not a vintage player, i try to have a rational use of mana. That's sad to keep a lotus out of a vintage deck (Especially when you get a Beta, signed one) but i won't include cards just because they so powerfull and are in every other vintage deck.

After all, I'm just a bad vintage player. But i try to be a good magic player, especially in Mana/life management.

[sean1i0]

Alright, assume that you mox emerald/lotus petal is good enough for your purposes a percentage of time x.  Now, x cannot be equal to 100, because logic tells us that there will exist a time when you could use the extra two mana to win/gain more tempo.  Now, the thing is, I would rather have that mana 100% of the time, use it to put me in a winning position that 100-x percent of the time, and take the mana burn x percent of the time, then not have it when I need it.

The main point about life in Vintage is that it's a resource more so than in any other format.  Why?  Because almost every tier 1 deck in Vintage doesn't care about life totals until it wins.  Slaver?  It doesn't care about your life, it'll just take your turns till the cows come home.  Gifts?  Nope, it'll just win in one massive series of plays, regardless of your life total.  The same basic principle goes for storm combo, psychatog, belcher, stax, etc.  Granted, there are a few decks that do care about "winning small," but let's take a look at them:  FCG, Friggorid, Fish, and Oath (to an extent).  As for FCG, it's the battle of the aggro decks, but since Friggorid's creatures can't really be killed and Friggorid has more disruption, in theory, although I admittedly have not played out the matchup, should win.  The mirror match is irrelevent in this discussion, because they're going to be dealing with the same amount of self-damaging elements you are.  As for fish, that really does not strike me as being a bad matchup for this deck, since it's aggro.  I only mention Oath in in the same breath as Fish because dealing yourself two points of damage can actually make the game end one turn sooner; that being said, Oath hates bounce, which you can have in spades post-sideboard.  Even pre-sideboard, Smennen has said before that this deck is capable of racing Oathed up angels.

The main thing that should be taken from this though is the fact that life should be looked at as a resource in Vintage; granted it is a limited, important resource, but that does not change what it is, thus the reason that such cards as skeletal scrying, city of brass, etc. are so damn good in Vintage (when in the right decks, of course).

[Neonico]

Against oath, 2 life = one turn.
I dont even speack of Tendrils (YOu burn yourself for 2 lifes turn one for your root maze and your opponent wins 1 storm beside the turn he looses), Fish (Its in fact against aggro that its the less important) and belcher (I played turn 1 root maze from emerald, Bazaar, Chalice for 0 on turn 1, I would have lost this round if i burned with lotus, he managed to belcher me for 15 points and i ended at 2 because of City of Brass).

I consider your argument where X is different of 100 % (Thats even why i cut lotus) but i burned myself 100 % of the time (ANd i was very close of 100 games during my tests) using Lotus. By the way, statistics are theory.

As im not a Vintage expert, i ask toad and toad usually answer that an event that will happen 1% of the games you play, will happen once every 5 or 6 tournaments (7 rounds, 3 matches of top 8, 2,5 games per round = 4 tournaments). Thats why i can argue that lotus isnt needed. At worst, ill regreat it once every 4 tournaments (assuming i Top 2 every tournament)

And beside theory, i never missed lotus. I played no game i would have make something different if emerald was lotus. Its how i feel the best with the deck, i hope ill never have any problem with that. So no need to argue, i wont change my mind, even if im wrong. I just wanted to share my experience, i didnt think i would be welcomed like that.

Perhaps my arguments arent good, but i didnt read any argument that show me lotus is needed in the deck. The "Every vintage deck should play lotus" isnt really the good reason to make me include it.

[UR]

Dude, seriously... if you take manaburn from your lotus you are a BAD PLAYER! Don't take it the wrong way... but please, don't cut the Lotus for the sake of sanity.

[Disburden]

Here, I'll resolve this argument for you:

I designed this deck.  Black Lotus goes into it as it goes into *every single vintage deck ever created*.  End of story. 
Any argument against lotus is flawed. 

It's funny that after this statement, which is 100% correct, there would be more responses arguing Black Lotus in a Vintage deck.

[Moxlotus]

Second, i perhaps play the deck the bad way but every example you gave me seems to be bad examples of how to play the deck. From my playtest and tournament experience, from how i feel the deck runs, from how i play it (the wrong way perhaps, smennen you can tell me if I'm right or not) you allmost NEVER WANT to cast multiple ancestral/Brainstorm, especially on turn one (Because as i allready stated, its better as a dredge more spell after bazaar activation.

Yes, you are playing it wrong.  I played it like this too and repeatedly lost.  You want to play a bunch of draw spells right away so you can find your Bazaar.  Yes, they would rock even more if you waited till you get a Bazaar--but that could be a few turns and you aren't doing anything in the meantime.

Black Lotus>Lotus petal.  Always.  Almost never are you taking damage.  You can get back multiple Ghouls.  You can cast multiple things in a turn.  Petal can't.  This would be like arguing a Rit that gave BB would be better than Dark Ritual sometimes because you won't burn as often.  It's not Emerald vs. Lotus---its Petal Vs. Lotus.  There is no denying that Black Lotus is strictly better than Lotus Petal.  Once in a blue moon you might take 2 damage...and once in a blue moon of those it might mean the difference of a game.  But much more often than that would it be better to be getting more mana.

[frontier]

Black Lotus>Lotus petal.  Always.  Almost never are you taking damage. 

Totally agree. If you can afford Lotus or proxy of it, run it. Your deck has plenty resources, that can be played early and two mana make big difference. In late game usually both are useless, so I vote for Lotus.

My two cents: Is is possible to build this deck on budget without Bazaar of Baghdad? (You can put Chrome Mox instead of Mox Jet, or Lotus Petal instead of Black Lotus, but what you can put instead of Bazaars?)

[zeus-online]

This is the weirdest (is that a word?) post i've ever read....! Seriosly...my jar dropped when i read that someone was playing petal over black lotus??

Seriosly, this is vintage, i've burned for 7 and still won the game (Although, never with this deck) i have never *EVER* lost a game due to mana burn. (Unless it was intentional, as a way to concede) While i most certainly have lost quite a bit of games due to not having enough mana! (Be it wasteland, mana screw or something else)

/Zeus

[Neonico]

Ok, during this tournament, and the 2 weeks playtest i did, i never had to dig to find  bazaar with draw spells. NEVER. Reason : With 3 tutors, 4 bazaars and 4 imps, (11 cards) and i forget study (12 cards, 1/5), its allmost never needed. Or some heavy drawers hands should definatly be mulliganed. You cant spend time to dig to find bazaar. If you do it, you play the deck wrong. You have to have a discard outlet/tutor for it in your opening hand or youll loose the game against any competitive deck, simply because this is a race deck.

That said, ok im wrong. Play black lotus (And its not for budget reason, i got lotus and we cant proxy in france BTW, all tournaments are anctionned).

On a side note, you lost every game you used Tral/Brainstorm to dredge, i lost every game i used brainstorm/tral to dig. There is something wrong in that statement, yours or mine. But with a deck which AIM to make the biggest dredge possible, i really think that i dont play it that bad.

And please, i never said that petal> lotus. Its definatly right that black lotus is  the best. Its just, for me, not needed in the deck. Thats wht im thinking, you all play black lotus and lets speack about something else please.

[Neonico]

Congrats on the finish Neonico, and you seem to have a lot of good points. The one thing I question is that you played without chalice. Did you ever really miss the disruption, especially disruption that is great in a deck with practically no spells?

I didnt totally answer. 3 monthes ago, we came up to a very close list with - Chalice + Nether Shadow. But there was a problem. The lack of disruption made the deck too weak to play competivly so we dissmissed it and i play madness at the previous Clichy tournament.

[nataz]

I don't think that black lotus is as important in this deck as it is in other decks, especially pre-board. I also find myself pretty regularly taking damage from it simply because I can't always use all 3 mana of one color each turn.

That being said, I'll take the risk of an extra damage here and there as a trade off for the randomly busted plays of chaing 3 draw spells, or tutor + cabal therp + imp. Not to mention that lotus is pretty sweet for casting balance and null rod.

[thokash]

I'll skip over the Lotus Petal vs Black Lotus debate as I think we already know the outcome of that...

What I am more interested in is your reasoning for taking Null Rod out of the board.  Since Steve started playing Root Maze, it does feel that a lot of the cards overlap in their duties.  At this stage, i'm not to sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing.  After sideboard, you normally bring in 8 cards (4 Null Rod, 4 Pithing Needle/4 Root Maze) against your main hate card in Tormod's Crypt, and any sort of fast combo deck.  What my question is, are the full suite of Rod/Needle/Maze necessary in the sideboard now?  Perhaps you could expand a bit more on your decision Neonico.

While we are still on sideboard, just a short note about Leyline of the Void.  Does anyone know why this isn't being played?  It's obviously stellar in the mirror, especially when you can nab opposing Chains with Therapies.  Is this card not as useful against Gifts/Slaver (our 'bad' matchups) as other sideboard choices? 

[Neonico]

Slaver is a very positive matchup, both pre and post side, even with maindeck Crypt. In fact, i never boarded in rod for 2 reasons :
2 mana casting cost, definatly not for the deck
Dont have room to bring more than 6 cards after sideboard, or the deck becomes too much slow and you dont get benefit from the extra disruption if you slow the deck too much.

That said, gift deck (And especially the merchant.dec, a french gift variation disigned by Klu) is alot more savage than slaver and bringing in ReB/rootmaze/CoV seems to be the good play to avoid the real problem : Early tinker for colossus. I did an terrible misstake in my semi that costed me game 2 but i should have won it.

I really think that the right sideboard, for a gift/slaver meta is :
3 Rootmaze
2 CoV (The 2 other in the main, removing Balance/Walk in my list)
4 ReB
3 Stifle
3 Needle

all cards are really usefull against Yard disruption and got an utility beside that :

3 Rootmaze ---> Savage against combo
2 CoV (The 2 other in the main, removing Balance/Walk in my list) ---> deal with colossus
4 ReB ----> Against tinker. Should perhaps be extract, im also thinking of Hide/seek in this slot
3 Stifle ----> Storm and Slaver/Belcher
3 Needle ----> Good against fish, belcher and i forget some other

[Quistnix]

My two cents: Is is possible to build this deck on budget without Bazaar of Baghdad? (You can put Chrome Mox instead of Mox Jet, or Lotus Petal instead of Black Lotus, but what you can put instead of Bazaars?)

I'm currently building a very budget monoblack version of the deck, focusing on major disruption. Playing a full set of Wastelands, Ghost Quarters, Strip Mines, as well as 4 Chalices, Unmasks and Therapies buys me some time while I set up using Anvil of Bogardan and Zombie Infestation. It's nowhere near the power of the bazaar-driven version, but it can be done on a budget..

[frolll]

I actually play a list very very close to Mennedian's one, but I've done the following: -4 CotV, +4 Root Maze md.
They are so sweet against that many decks, I don't miss Chalice at all, and didn't move them to sideboard.

My sideboard looks like that:
4 Chain of Vapor
4 Pithing Needle
3 Darkblast (since 1 is maindecked)
4 Tormod's Crypt

I don't run Null Rod because Needle just do the same.

Black Lotus is infinite times better than lotus petal. Period.
Balance maindecked is pretty nut.
And I run Breakthrough instead of Careful Study as a one of.

Also, I run 1 Tarnished Citadel instead of one Underground Sea, to make Root Maze turn 1 easier.