Pitch Long

[ErkBek]

Here's my new deck that I took 3rd with.

2C Pitch Long[/u]
Land 11
4 Delta
2 Strand
2 Usea
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Academy

Accel 19
8 Sol-lo-moxen-crypt
1 LED
1 Petal
1 Vault
4 Dark Rit
4 Cabal Rit

Protection 8
4 FoW
3 MisD
1 Chain of Vapor

Business 22
4 BS
3 Grim
1 VT
1 MT
1 DT
1 Iseal
1 Ancestral
1 Tinker
1 Jar
1 Windfall
1 Twister
1 Desire
1 Bargain
1 Necro
1 Will
1 Tendrils
1 Time Walk

SB
4 ESG
3 Hurkyl's
1 Rebuild
2 Bazaar
2 Brainfeeze
1 Tendrils
1 DSC
1 Massacre

In a post-Richmond metagame I knew Grim Long was a better to run in Charlotte than IT.  I hadn’t done a whole lot of testing with 5C Grim Long until about 1 month ago, upon hearing that I would probably be able to catch a ride to Charlotte with some of the ICBM crew.

One thing that was driving me crazy was hearing Steve, Paul, and Tin_Mox say GL is unbeatable unless you fuck up.  I had to give this so called “unbeatable” deck another try.  My testing showed that this deck is for sure beatable.  Gifts, Stax, and oath are all very scary matchups that can go either way.  Duress wasn’t doing a whole lot vs. any of them.  I wanted to try the SB Forces in the maindeck, doing so would require a couple more blue cards to support force.

I had tried JD’s 2.5 color long deck a before Richmond and really liked it.  My teammates really liked the deck better than Steve’s build as well.  I think both JD and I had independently tried FoW’s in his deck and had some similar results.  I had a list with FoW’s in it long before Rochester and Charlotte, it looked a lot like Litz Long. 

So I decided to test Litz Long card for card.  After a testing session I cut a duress for another land since I felt that additional lands helped me continue to pump out threats even when I burned rituals producing threats. After a tournament I felt the deck could be on par with GL, but it was surprisingly less consistent due to the addition of Force of Will.

Before JD’s retirement, he helped me understand why FoW’s sometimes just don’t work in combo.  Picthing blue spells = pitching your business spells.  Instead of protecting a single threat, you could just play more threats.

With this knowledge, I researched other combo decks running Force of Will. I started off with a deck that was a little before my time, Draw7.  I read about 4 pages info, but I didn’t bother building it. I also read all the Horden Tendrils thread again for further guidance, since Tobi seemed to have a lot of success with his creation.

After 15 minutes of brainstorming, I had it.  I would try cutting duress from Litz Long, for another blue protection spell, Misdirection.

I tested it, and it was a huge improvement.  I rarely ever had problems supporting Force or MisD all night.  The Gifts, CS, and Oath matchup all seemed better.  The stax matchup was about the same since I could support FoW better.

 I would have liked to test the SB a little more, but I had only had a few days before Charlotte so I had to wing it.

4 ESG
4 Bounce

These 8 cards are the GL stax plan.  It was effective from past experience with JD’s list so I kept it.

2 Bazaar

This was my tech for the tournament.  Bazaar is nuts vs. stax since you often times can’t play brainstorms so you need another way to filter.  I only ran 2 since I was still a little uncertain of them.  They were great; I’m going to up them to 3.

2 Brain freeze

I wanted to have something to help vs. GL.  This was the best card I could think of that was blue.

1 Tendrils
1 DSC
1 Massacre

I love having a second tendrils post board at times.  It protects me from random extracts and is great in the mirror. 

I’d be happy to answer any questions or just hear other people’s feedback.

-Eric

[LordHomerCat]

So Eric, do you consider this sort of an upgrade to IT?  Whats your feeling on your IT with drains, vs. this or regular GrimLong?  Are there times you would consider switching back to those or do you think this is just a better deck?  I like the forces main, I found I board them in against almost everyone, and duress comes out against anyone with counters it seems.  Did you test with the 5color manabase and the Force/MisD plan, or only with the fetch base?

[nicofromtokyo]

Call me ugly, but the only difference with Litz Long is just 3 Misdirection for 3 Duress, right? And the Mind's Desire instead of the seconde bounce spell (which I think it's still not a good choice for the reasons stated on heiner's thread). The only reason to play Misdi is your opponent's Ancestral Recall, but I don't feel them strictly superior to Duress, morever enough superior to say this is a new deck.

[M.Solymossy]

Misdirection makes thsi a completely new deck.  I ran it in Green Bay, WI and several times, I first turned control players with Fow OR misD.

in top 8 I actually won a game by Lotus - Necro (misd).

[Moxlotus]

So Eric, do you consider this sort of an upgrade to IT?  Whats your feeling on your IT with drains, vs. this or regular GrimLong?  Are there times you would consider switching back to those or do you think this is just a better deck?  I like the forces main, I found I board them in against almost everyone, and duress comes out against anyone with counters it seems.  Did you test with the 5color manabase and the Force/MisD plan, or only with the fetch base?

IT is for Stax.meta.  I would not play this deck in a stax metagame.  It would be kinda rough.

Call me ugly, but the only difference with Litz Long is just 3 Misdirection for 3 Duress, right? And the Mind's Desire instead of the seconde bounce spell (which I think it's still not a good choice for the reasons stated on heiner's thread). The only reason to play Misdi is your opponent's Ancestral Recall, but I don't feel them strictly superior to Duress, morever enough superior to say this is a new deck.

Duress costs mana to get rid of a counter.  MisD protects your draw 7 without costing mana.  It really sucks to have to choose between casting Duress and casting a ritual first if you only have 1 black source.  If you cast Duress you slow yourself down a turn.  If you go ballsy and cast ritual and it gets countered you could be screwed.  Possibly more importantly, MisD is blue.  As a bonus, it LOLs at Hymn to Tourach, which is becoming a more popular tool against combo.

Did you test with the 5color manabase and the Force/MisD plan, or only with the fetch base?

2 color mana base is amazing.   You get a non wasteable land if you have a solid, but not OMG INSANE hand.  It also helps if you are on the draw and your opponent Duresses your only business.  They can't lay a waste and completely take you out of the game if you play a fetch-->basic instead of 5 color land. That is probably the biggest flaw we found in 5-color Long as Eric mentioned earlier.  Duress (or SoR)+waste can completely bone you.  At least with a 5-color manabase you can hope to rip something. 

You get threshold earlier which can be gamebreaking.  Most importantly, you get Brainstorm+fetchland.  As every control player knows, that combo is huge.  Draw good cards and put back extra protection/lands/brainstorms.

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

As for the deck, pitch counters definitely have more synergy with draw7s than duress does, and being free are better for playing early protected bombs under mana constraints and such.  That said, I often like duress because it does far more than disrupt the opponent by taking away one of their cards.  If it resolves it tells one everything about one's opponent's hand, and thus one knows what one's opponent is playing and can easily anticipate what he/she will do.  Also, it can help one to know if one's opponent has multiple hate spells to work around (in that a pitch counter+card will take care of one hate card/threat, whereas if duress resolves it can get rid of one and prevent one from walking into hate if one's opponent has another.

I also think that the 2 colour mana base adds a great deal of stability to Grim Long while sacrificing very little.

[Smmenen]

I was remiss at not saying this at the outset:

Good job to eric not for just making top  4, but also for finding new ways to win with Tendrils combo.  You are keeping us on our toes - and giving my huge affinity for Misdirection, I was shocked that I didn't think of this.  Good job agian.

[nicofromtokyo]

Misdirection makes thsi a completely new deck.  I ran it in Green Bay, WI and several times, I first turned control players with Fow OR misD.
in top 8 I actually won a game by Lotus - Necro (misd).

Don't get me wrong, I didn't say Misdi is bad, I just said this simple change doesn't make Litz Long. deck   Grim Force.deck. It's more a metagame concern or a sideboarding issue, you could run the Misdirection on the SB and side off Duress for them in game 2 against control, that would be the same thing. I like Litz long, and don't feel replacing Duress with Misdi makes it a completly different deck, although I admit Misdi are stronger than Duress regarding the matchup. But the way to play the deck doesn't change enough to worth the changement of the name. In my opinion.

[Smmenen]

If you really want to play that game, I'll just remind everyone that Litz long started as a deck *I* created from scratch, Grim Long, and then was tuned in a particular direction. 

[nicofromtokyo]

There's a difference between 2 decks completely differently tuned, and 2 decks with only 3 differents control cards.

What are the common points between Grim Long and Litz Long, except the fact they're Storm deck based on Grim Tutor?
Different approach, different stategies, different defenses, different way of playing, different matchups...

What are the differences between Grim Force and Litz Long?
Misdi over Duress.

But you're right, that's not the point of this thread, I'll just wait for more explanations I probably didn't catch regarding the deck that I will for sure give a try.

[Moxlotus]

There's a difference between 2 decks completely differently tuned, and 2 decks with only 3 differents control cards.

What are the common points between Grim Long and Litz Long, except the fact they're Storm deck based on Grim Tutor?
Different approach, different stategies, different defenses, different way of playing, different matchups...

What are the differences between Grim Force and Litz Long?
Misdi over Duress.

But you're right, that's not the point of this thread, I'll just wait for more explanations I probably didn't catch regarding the deck that I will for sure give a try.

It doesn't matter becauase I am following JD's example of never putting a person's name or team name in the title when posting the decklist for SCG (exception--Meandeck Tendrils, because its a really unique deck that has essentially no room for significant changes or play differences like the different Gifts decks).  This debate is over.

On another note I now believe that Duress and FoW should never be in the same combo deck.  Either go ballsy with just Duress for disruption or if you want 7-8 disruption use the pitch counters.  If you have Duress+Fow, the only cards you can pitch are business--so that's bad.  Or if you play Duress, you have a shitty FoW chilling in your hand half the time.

[Auracon]

As far the naming goes: I don’t think it really matters, since naming is just semantics. Grim Force sounds just as good as any Stephan.

Congrats on the win. The deck certainly has a lot of potential. Several questions:

Is imperial seal needed since the deck already has six tutors on top of draw7s and necro bargain? Wouldn’t just adding rebuild or another tendrils be better in most situations.

IT is for Stax.meta.  I would not play this deck in a stax metagame.  It would be kinda rough.

Does the sideboard solve this match? You are sideboarding in ESG’s, bounce, and bazaars which seems enough.

Btw, statiscally any deck is beatable... grim longs percentages are just really good.

[ErkBek]

Thanks for the feedback everybody.

I'd like to address the whole name thing. JD's list is really what I started with. My rebuild of his deck put me within 2 cards of Litz Long so I figured I'd put together Litz Long card for card. I believe the changes where

-1 Land
-1 Bounce
+2 Duress

[AJFirst]

My vote's still for AwsomeLong.
-AJ

[Phele]

I don't get this whole name thing. Who cares how Steve or JD name decks! The whole Vintage world isn't just taking them as an example for everything. Steve is innovating a lot and so giving many names to decks – what usually just means giving the Meandeck stamp to the deck which seems to be pretty boring. But that's up to him, as he innovated the deck.

That's what Heiner did: He innovated a deck putting a 2 color manabase and 4 Cabal Rituals together in a Grim-Tendrils-deck, took it to a big tournament, top4ed with it, started a detailled but for whatever reasons mostly overlooked thread on TMD and didn't think too much about naming the deck so just called it after himself. So what? Thats up to him. But what happens, he get blamed for being egoistic in this thread a lot just for naming his own baby. Who made such a big noise about the Sullivan Solution, who? Right, nobody! You call the deck SS, but nobody call Heiners creation LL or whatever. No he just get blamed. Why?

Just rename the deck Eric, there is no real problem with that: Misdirection is a nice innovation and you get all the respect for that. But stop bitching on Heiner with things like "Better than Litz Long", which still has to be proven as both decks top4ed in a big competetive tourney. Btw, a thing JDs variant - however it looks like as it has never been published anywhere – has so far I know never done. It's a different thing to have good ideas in your pocket or share them with friends and teammembers – what we all do – and to bring them to a tournament and succeed with them.

[dicemanx]

First, congrats Eric on your performance - there's a lot of pretty original stuff coming out of the midwest that's generating results in fairly large events, and you guys are expanding the diversity of this format. Well done.

I do have a few questions about this approach to this iteration of "Long.dec"

Before JD’s retirement, he helped me understand why FoW’s sometimes just don’t work in combo.  Picthing blue spells = pitching your business spells.  Instead of protecting a single threat, you could just play more threats.

This is true, although its very difficult to assess at how beneficial adding a defensive element is to a very fast goldfish deck. We've thought about that with WGD for a while (same idea - FoW was deemed rather unnecessary because of WGD's speed and the idea that threats are better than answers when racing your opponent); with WGD, it is a never-ending struggle to determine what an optimal disruption base is, and it happens to be constantly changing with a constantly shifting meta. Three things changed that prompted the addition of FoW:

1) WGD was able to support a greater number of blue spells
2) it had very explosive card draw
3) decks are much faster on average now and have greater number of bombs, which makes having defensive stoppers more desireable

Now granted WGD and Long are like night and day in terms of strategies, but the ideas behind ratios of disruption spells to business spells and the debate about the effectiveness between the various disruption options (particularly FoW vs Duress vs Swarm vs Misd etc) are very similar. Now what I did find was how very important #2 was on my list - FoW was very difficult to justify unless you were in the process of resolving a game ending bomb, or unless you were drawing lots of cards and had "extra" cards available to pitch to FoW. And the latter is the one component that is lacking in Litz Long and this version as well. The question then is really how much of a difference has it made to add the FoWs maindeck to better support the resolution of a bomb? In your post, its a little unclear whats going on:

After 15 minutes of brainstorming, I had it.  I would try cutting duress from Litz Long, for another blue protection spell, Misdirection.

I tested it, and it was a huge improvement.  I rarely ever had problems supporting Force or MisD all night.  The Gifts, CS, and Oath matchup all seemed better.  The stax matchup was about the same since I could support FoW better.

Now based on this, I take "it was a huge improvement" as meaning that adding extra U spells (Misds) made for casting FoW more consistent. However, based on this night of testing, and your use of the phrase "seemed better", I'm still curious what your assessment of FoW/Misd is versus not running any disruption at all (or minimal disruption). There is always an inescapable trade-off - you run fewer combo pieces by increasing disruption, and as a consequence you are slower but more consistent and less prone to bombs against you (whether game ending bombs or control elements that could otherwise shut you down). However, "less prone" is not easy to assess - using FoW defensively without a means of generating card advantage means being potentially at a serious disadvantage in any attrition wars. Now there's no doubt that this can be largely overcome by the fact that you have your own game ending bombs that can trump this downside, but the ultimate question is whether the "ideal" approach is FoW/Misd, Duress only, or nothing (focusing on increasing threat density even more game 1, and bringing in heavier disruption games 2/3). Did you notice significant improvements by going with the FoW/Misd disruption base? And more importantly, what happened in the tourney itself, the ultimate proving ground for new ideas? You obviously performed well, but was it because of the changes or in spite of them? Or is it too difficult to assess properly at this stage with so little evidence?

[ErkBek]

Just rename the deck Eric, there is no real problem with that: Misdirection is a nice innovation and you get all the respect for that. But stop bitching on Heiner with things like "Better than Litz Long", which still has to be proven as both decks top4ed in a big competetive tourney. Btw, a thing JDs variant - however it looks like as it has never been published anywhere – has so far I know never done. It's a different thing to have good ideas in your pocket or share them with friends and teammembers – what we all do – and to bring them to a tournament and succeed with them.

I'm sorry, that was immature. I'll delete what I modified.

I'll tackle Diceman's post later today, but I've got to go to class for now.

-Eric

[Phele]

Well, I took 1st at the three events I played my deck at before Richmond.  Bloomington (Dec. 2005), Cleveland (split with Brian Demars, Feb. 2006), Dayton (April 2006).  I discussed the deck with Eric as well, somewhere between Cleveland and Dayton. However, I kept the deck list secret at the request of my teammates until Richmond, and made sure not to play the deck in places where GWS, ICBM, and Team Ogre would be present.  That's also why I didn't right any tournament reports for those events. I feel that was a huge mistake, as Meandeck didn't have a lot of interest in the deck I had made, instead opting for Steve's deck.  Trust me, I wish I hadn't kept it secret for so long at that point.  After bombing out at Richmond, there was nothing to be said about it anymore (Intuition Tendrils was the big innovation, and I scrubbed), and I retired shortly after that.

The list is in the database, just look at the very bottom of Richmond Day 1 for my name.  I didn't have a good day that day at all.

So I gotta say sorry, I didn't know that. Interesting list! At least we can say that there happened some UB(g) Grim Tutor innovation on two continents at almost the same time without knowing from each other

I'm also pretty curious on the disruption discussion as diceman brought up pretty interesting points.

[Smmenen]

Steve doesn't call Grim Long, Menendian Long or The Stephen.

Many people keep asking me when I'm going to change the name and the answer is always the same: i'm not.  Grim Long makes perfect sense and is well established.  Changing it would not make much sense. 

I know people hate mike long - understandably, but I didn't like the other original name for long.dec: burning academy.  Neither really captured what the deck was trying to do. 

Grim for Grim Tutor and Long conjures up at least some semblance of the deck's concept if you know what original long was. 

As for which is better, I do'nt think thats a fair question.  This deck is probably only a hair slower than long.dec, but has slightly less threat density.  There are trade offs that are so hard to measure I can't even tell.  I just know that I like this deck, but I'd stil play my deck for lots of reasons.

I do suggest that you try a 4th Grim Tutor, however. 

[ErkBek]

Now based on this, I take "it was a huge improvement" as meaning that adding extra U spells (Misds) made for casting FoW more consistent. However, based on this night of testing, and your use of the phrase "seemed better"

Admittedly, I haven’t done much testing with my list.  Before the tournament I had about 25 goldfishes and 35 actual games (I think the highlight was 5-0’ing the carps with oath…..SO DEVISTATING!). 

I'm still curious what your assessment of FoW/Misd is versus not running any disruption at all (or minimal disruption). There is always an inescapable trade-off - you run fewer combo pieces by increasing disruption, and as a consequence you are slower but more consistent and less prone to bombs against you (whether game ending bombs or control elements that could otherwise shut you down). However, "less prone" is not easy to assess - using FoW defensively without a means of generating card advantage means being potentially at a serious disadvantage in any attrition wars. Now there's no doubt that this can be largely overcome by the fact that you have your own game ending bombs that can trump this downside, but the ultimate question is whether the "ideal" approach is FoW/Misd, Duress only, or nothing (focusing on increasing threat density even more game 1, and bringing in heavier disruption games 2/3). Did you notice significant improvements by going with the FoW/Misd disruption base

If you were to run no disruption in a combo deck, I think it would have to look something like meandeck tendrils.  I personally feel that meandeck tendrils is a pretty good deck, just not tier 1.  The problem I feel with running a disruption-less deck that is not like meandeck tendrils, is you can’t properly use your entire hand. 

For example, you run into problems with playing all your rituals to play a bomb only to have it have its resolution depending on your opponent’s play.  What if they have a counter?  Can you recover?  What if it resolves and you are holding another dark ritual you didn’t play? You didn’t optimize this bomb. 

I felt that GL often had a trade off playing a turn 1 bomb or playing duress to protect this bomb.  In game 1’s you have to make a decision that will often make or break you that you can’t possibly know which is right unless you know what your opponent is playing.  To an extent this is less of a problem when playing better manabase, however I found that the FoW + MisD plan is quite effective as well.  The FoW + MisD plan is also just amazing with draw 7’s.  Suddenly you don’t have to dick around with playing duress or having your first ritual countered.  I made an interesting observation when running Litz Long that often times during a draw7 turn if you had mana to duress, you had mana to play a hardcast force or an additional threat, otherwise you where very tight on mana and would not be able to play a protection spell. 

And more importantly, what happened in the tourney itself, the ultimate proving ground for new ideas? You obviously performed well, but was it because of the changes or in spite of them? Or is it too difficult to assess properly at this stage with so little evidence?

Most of the time in throughout the tournament when I drew a MisD it was critical to winning in that it served as a FoW and not a Duress.  I only remember 1 circumstance in which I would have rather had duress than either counter, resulting in me attempting a turn 1 kill in which I brainstormed away a Force and when I had bonus mana to play a duress.  Luckily, my opponent didn’t have a FoW and blue card and I won that turn.

@Steve: I'll try a 4th Grim Tutor soon. Would you cut a MisD for it? or something like cabal rit or winfall?

[Smmenen]

I would cut Windfall.  But I would be very careful.  You have already cut some threats, so I would just be extra cautious.  If the windfall cut doesn't feel right, then go back.

Eric, did you ever see one of my 2004 storm decks, Draw7?  If for no other reason than to provoke some thought, you should check it out.  I probably stopped talking about it before you got into competitive Vintage.  I'm an old fart: http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/6919.html

[nataz]

...With this knowledge, I researched other combo decks running Force of Will. I started off with a deck that was a little before my time, Draw7.  I read about 4 pages info, but I didn’t bother building it. I also read all the Horden Tendrils thread again for further guidance, since Tobi seemed to have a lot of success with his creation.

[Smmenen]

i swear i can read.

[nicofromtokyo]

Regarding the naming, what about Blitz Long  .

Thoughts about the deck:

-I am always missing Wheel of Fortune. You need a full loaded yard to be effective, Timetwister just empties it, Windfall may be too weak and Jar may be one turn too slow. I know it hurts the mana base, but I feel remplacing a single Underground Sea to a single Badlands while cutting Windfall for Wheel worths the pain.

-I found problematic the situation when (for any reasons) your Yagwin falls into the Yard, as you have nothing to play it again (except Timetwister) during the game, and no Recoup or Regrowth to get it back.

-Didn't like Mind's Desire even with Duress, still don't like it with Misdirection, as you don't have so many bombs as in TPS or Grim Long, and you may regret to have spend 6 mana to get land-mox-ritual-Misdirection-FoW. Won't a second bounce be better?

I really would like to play Burning Wish (2nd kill) and Recoup (for Yagwin via LED) in the build, cutting 2 seas for 1 Badlands and 1 Volcanic Island, but I guess it becomes a different deck then.

[Moxlotus]

Didn't like Mind's Desire even with Duress, still don't like it with Misdirection, as you don't have so many bombs as in TPS or Grim Long, and you may regret to have spend 6 mana to get land-mox-ritual-Misdirection-FoW. Won't a second bounce be better?

The deck has like 1 bomb less than Grim Long and as many or more than TPS.

I found problematic the situation when (for any reasons) your Yagwin falls into the Yard, as you have nothing to play it again (except Timetwister) during the game, and no Recoup or Regrowth to get it back.

You have Twist to get it back.  You have Desire, Windfall, Jar, Bargain, and bounce to up youself to 10 storm.

I really would like to play Burning Wish (2nd kill) and Recoup (for Yagwin via LED) in the build, cutting 2 seas for 1 Badlands and 1 Volcanic Island, but I guess it becomes a different deck then.

Might as well play Gifts then.

[Machinus]

Is spiral really a serious consideration for grim long (either 5c or UB)?

[BreathWeapon]

Is spiral really a serious consideration for grim long (either 5c or UB)?

It's better than people give it credit for, so long as it is not replacing a critical accelerant or bomb it can be used to supliment the threat base. People snicker at the card, but when you manage to Crop Rotation into Tolarian Academy and resolve Time Spiral they wont be laughing.

On another note, does any one else feel that Duress is weak in Combo after seeing Misdirection usurp its role? Every time I play a control or aggro-control match up I'd rather have Xantid Swarm MD for game one, and against Stax I'd rather just win than Duress. I don't think the marginal utility of Duress vs the field is worth the SB space it takes to shelve Xantid Swarm for game 2. When you have no idea if Duress is going to be any better than Xantid Swarm game 1, I'd rather accidentally drop Swarm on Control or Aggro-Control than discard a Sphere or Chalice (which is a coin flip to say it even happens). Is a card that is always SB out games 2 and 3 and only makes a difference to Swarm 50% of the time really worth it?

[heiner]

Mad props to Litz for building a pretty good combo deck and all, but slops for naming the deck after himself.

uuum aeh, so thats your only argument for choosing a new name, not the deck itself? I dont feel that you can demand the right of changing dec names just because you dont like em. Litz Long represents an alliteration with both words additionally having the same amount of letters, I mean how cool can a name be?

Steve doesn't call Grim Long, Menendian Long or The Stephen.

I respect steve and all, he defines the intellectual magic elite but still why should this influence my process on inventing a new dec name? I wouldnt have called it John Doe Long if that was my name by the way.


I also tested Misd a while ago in the SB and was pretty impressed by them as they fullfil the role of FOW better as in any other deck. I never had the balls to actually replace the well established duresses though so mad props to kobe! The 3 misdis lower the pressure of playing shitty blue cards for the blue count which makes better cards playable. Windfall and Minds Desire are still supoptimal in my eyes so beeing able to replace them for another grim should be good!

On another sidenote Im currently testing a red splash consisting of Wheel of Fortune and 1 Badlands.

Im still not sure with the SB tech vs. stax I am currently playing 4 Confidant and 4 Negator (and some bounce), mostly because of Jesters Cap which is played in every stax dec around here. It also helps  vs arcane lab and pyrostatic pillar which are played in stax over here to dodge artifact bounce.

Please elaborate a little bit more about the bazaars. Against which decs you board them in? I cant  believe that they are  good enough because their card DA, or am I wrong?

[ErkBek]

Mad props to Litz for building a pretty good combo deck and all, but slops for naming the deck after himself.

uuum aeh, so thats your only argument for choosing a new name, not the deck itself? I dont feel that you can demand the right of changing dec names just because you dont like em. Litz Long represents an alliteration with both words additionally having the same amount of letters, I mean how cool can a name be?

I'm not sure if you realize this, but all Storm combo decks with Grim Tutor are very similar in nature. I honestly almost played Steve's 5C mana base just for wheel. If I would have done that, I'd be running steve's deck right? I actually was within 2 cards of Litz Long form working with JD's build. I only built your list just to see if your threat density would be better. I don't know if you've noticed this, but your list is kind of generic, when building a UB Long deck you've got about the following slots already filled

11 Land
11 Artifact Accel
8  Rituals / ESG's

4  BS
6  Tutors
9  Restricted Bombs
1  Bounce (minimum)
4  Disruption (minimum)

So that's only 6 cards to work with. Do you think that you're the only one to ever build a UB long deck? I could even say this deck is within 11 cards of IT. Here watch

-3 Intuition
-4 Duress
-3 Land
-1 Rebuild
+1 Tinker
+1 Jar
+1 Cabal
+1 LED
+1 Windfall
+1 Desire
+3 MisD
+1 Iseal
+1 Time Walk

[BreathWeapon]

KobeFan is right,

I've had an incarnation of U/b Deat Long and U/g Grim Long posted before any one else, not that I ever bothered to take the credit for it, it's an intuitive idea to cut Wheel of Fortune and Crop Rotation and leave your Xantid Swarms at home if you're going into a Fish metagame etc. Regardless of who "invented" the deck, KobeFan came up with the novelty of Misdirection and took it to a Top8. Columbus didn't discover America first, he just got the credit.

On a more constructive note, how is LED with 7 pitch spells? I was never a fan of the card in previous Tendril builds that used Force of Will, and using Force of Will AND Misdirection seems like it could cause problems. I know LED is just so randomly awesome, but has it ever given you problems?

Was there a reason you rejected the 4 Dark Confidant and 3 Tendrils plan in the SB?