"go big or go home" Burning Slaver; Decklist

[Liam-K]

Plus burning wish lets you play an early, non-backbreaking will and still have access to will.  Not to be overlooked.

[forests failed you]

true
but this rarely ever happens

if i am willing you are dead.

[rologa]

I usually play CS and I find very interesting the new direction Brian is making to the deck. One of the problems I found with CS in large tournaments is that usually I spend all the time for each round and sometimes I draw some matches for it. And what is worst I finish very tired because I don't have any free time between rounds. With this deck you can finish very quickly some matches (not very often but enough to have some time to relax) and your aggro match up isn't a complete nightmare as it is with a more control oriented deck.
But with this deck I have problems sideboarding. I found very difficult to cut cards from the main. Very often I sideboard out Gifts and Recoup against decks than attack my mana base (Stax, fish) or very fast combo (Grim, Belcher). But against control decks or more slow combo decks I don't know what to sideboard out. How often do you sideboard out chain of vapor and rebuild? They usually aren't necessary in this matchups but make much more easy the tendrils kill.
Do you sideboard out burning wish for tendrils sometimes? Do you always try to have the 2 condition kills on main or sometimes do you sideboard out one of them to have more space?

Rober.

[forests failed you]

If you are going to time you are playing too slowly!

I haven't drawn because of a clock out with a CS deck in over a year.  The key is to know the deck inside and out so that you can make your plays very quickly, and without having to think things out.  If you are playing with Gifts you should immediately know what cards you are going to get when you cast it.  It drives me absolutely nuts when people play tutors and then look through their decks to see what they can get.  This is a pretty good tell of a weak player.  I'm not saying this is the case with you, but quick concise play is very important when playing Slaver decks.


You never ever ever board out Burning Wish, even if you are boarding Tendrils in.  Always think Wish for Walk after a Yawgmoths Will.  That is busted rigth?

As far as specific choices go from the board.  I'm really really spuratic with my board plays.  I have no shame, and will do just about anything if I feel I can get away with it, or I anticipate something dreadful is being brought in against me.

I don't care what anybody else says:  The key to good sideboarding is to bring in the cards you think you will NEED over the course of the match.  You don't have to go over kill with a dozen cards, just enough that you will be able to answer problematic threats should they arise, and give you an edge to win.

When you board you should be able to have a reason for why each card is comming in, as well as why each card is comming out.  Just because you have REBs and Duress doesn't mean they all have to come in against control.  Especially, at the cost of weakening your threats and draw engine.  Rebuild and Chain are not the nuts against some control decks, I wouldn't hesitate to board one or the other out.  However, I also have no problem with boarding out Welders, Slaver, Drains, et cetera.

[Mantis]

The times when I cast Gifts Ungiven it will usually win me the game. But, it requires a huge amount of set up and Recoup is such a bad card to draw, that I wonder if it's right to actually play Recoup. Perhaps we should replace it with Vampiric Tutor so you can go for a pile of Demonic, Mystical, Vampiric + something else and get out Will + Lotus and win the game from there on. The whole Gifts chain is pretty mana intensive too. If you already burned your Lotus it's quite hard to get 5BR to cast Will. Just 2BB, 3BB or 2UB is much easier.

I've come to a point where I seriously hate the card. Just think of it, you will draw Recoup just as often as you will draw Gifts. And do you find yourself ever tutoring for Gifts? I actually never do. Having Vamp here allows for a lot more good plays and even brings another shuffle effect (as if we didn't have enough!).

Thought on this?

On Burning Wish vs. Tendrills: If Fish is present in the metagame play Burning Wish. Otherwise, I think it's mostly a choice of player preference. If you like the aggressive route Tendrills then MD the Tendrills and if you prefer playing the control role more, Burning Wish is your card. But if Fish is heavily present: play Burning Wish, you can't ignore it's necessity in that matchup.

[zeus-online]

If you are playing with Gifts you should immediately know what cards you are going to get when you cast it.  It drives me absolutely nuts when people play tutors and then look through their decks to see what they can get.  This is a pretty good tell of a weak player.

Hmmm while i mostly know what to get, situations does come up where i'm running short on resources both in hand and library and still need to pull myself out of an ugly situation. In cases like that its often hard to figure out which cards to get.

/Zeus

[forests failed you]

Burning Wish, plus Tinker, Plus Colossus, plus Recoup, Plus Will, plus Burning Wish is broken.

If you play Tinker Colossus and are not playing Burning Wish in a Gifts Slaver build, you have made a serious mistake.

In my opinion.


Sometimes there are tight end of game situations with Gifts where you are trying to figure out if you can even still win.  I understand that;  I'm talking about players who cast it and have no idea what they are going to get.  Those kinds of players go to time too much.

I call a judge IMMEDIATELY/

Just because my opponent sucks doesn't mean I should end up with a draw.

[Kowal]

For those of you having trouble resolving Gifts quickly, consider trying the following next time you play:

Step One:  You need a goal.  Pick one.  This could be setting up for a big Yawgmoth's Will, it could be refilling your hand, or it could be comboing out.  Depending on your resources and your build of whatever is running Gifts, you might find other circumstances, but these are the big ones.

Step Two:  Thumbing.  Grab your deck and thumb through it as quickly as possible, as though you were casting a single tutor and knew what to get.  You'll find the list of cards you get is actually very short, so making slight changes to accomodate your plan is simple.  Often, seeing the card you want will prompt you to know you want it, and you can slide it to the top and look at it.  Once you've dug through the deck, you'll usually have 4 or 5 cards at the top.  Cut the crappy one.

For reference, here's what I usually get

Ancestral Recall
Time Walk
Tinker
Demonic Tutor

In these piles, I can either get

A) Three cards and an extra turn.  In addition, your graveyard is absolutely lethal so any tutor is game over here.
B) Three cards and a Tinker.  If I'm playing a deck with Mindslaver, the three cards don't even really matter.
C) Three cards and Demonic Tutor.  It just gets Will--  You have Time Walk in the graveyard and presumably plenty of mana to go with your Gifts.
D) Time Walk and Demonic Tutor.  May god have mercy on your soul for the atrocities you're about to commit.
E) Time Walk and Tinker.  You get Memory Jar and a free untap.  If you Jar in to Goblin Welder the game is over.  If not, it's probably still over.  Alternatively, you can just get Colossus and beat for 11, or get Slaver and keep the Time Walk for yourself.
F) Tinker and Demonic Tutor.  Tinker for Black Lotus, and Demonic Tutor for Yawgmoth's Will, and then have fun.

The least dangerous of these piles is Ancestral and Time Walk, which is ludicrous.  Obviously if you've seen one or more of these cards already, you can just sub in something else.  Another Tutor is fine, if you have ungodly amounts of mana getting Recoup is okay.  I very, very rarely actually get Recoup with Gifts because there are so many better things to get.

[DoubleDrain]

While recoup is often sub-par, particularly early on, it can randomly let you time walk out of the yard, or demonic again.

If you run merchant scroll (which this build doesn't), you can scroll early and feel better knowing the recoup in hand just got a little better...

Don't forget that recoup makes Jar better as well.

It cannot be cut without seriously altering the way the deck runs.

[Kowal]

I'm not suggesting cutting it.  I'm just saying that in general, if you're grabbing it with Gifts you're making a mistake.

It's much better late game, when it can either recover a bad gifts for you, or become lethal off one of the extremely good but not necessarily game ending gifts piles like Ancestral Recall/Time Walk.

[Chamelet]

I'm not suggesting cutting it.  I'm just saying that in general, if you're grabbing it with Gifts you're making a mistake.

It's much better late game, when it can either recover a bad gifts for you, or become lethal off one of the extremely good but not necessarily game ending gifts piles like Ancestral Recall/Time Walk.

I agree. Taking Recoup is only good if you plan winning just after that (by using Recoup, of course). Other than that, any tutor is better.

[rologa]

Well, after more testing with the deck I found that it have a fantastic middle to late game but still can suffer on the early game in the same way as a more traditional CS deck suffers. Usually the games I lose involve people attacking my mana base with wastelands and stifles and retarding my development taking draw spells with duress. With some basics and smart playing you can avoid the attack manabase plan but duress continues to be a pain in the ass, taking away my business spells and retarding a lot my development.
I also note that when I cannot play early my thirsts (because no moxes or sphere of resistance or something else) my development suffers a lot, in particular if I don't have some shuffle effect to combine with brainstorms.
Then I have put some effort to try to improve this and searching in the web I found a very interested list that Kowal and Shay uses at Richmond. They uses a traditional CS list but with Night Whispers to improve the early game. I think that this card can solve some of the problems I said before and has more synergy with a more combo oriented list like this.
To include it I have to sacrifice some cards and I opted for cutting Repeal, a good card but not useful in all the situations and Recoup, a card that shines at the late game but dead at the beginning when CS is more vulnerable.

So basically my changes in the main are:
- 1 Repeal
- 1 Recoup
+2 Night Whisper

Well I also change the Tormod's Crypt with a Triskellion, more useful in my meta where aggro, condidant decks and fish appear in good numbers. This is a metagame call and I understand that Tormod's will be better in other metas.

What do you thing about this changes? Has someone tried other solutions to improve the early game?

[Mantis]

After having playtested without Recoup, I can say that I was wrong.
If you want to go Gifts -> Will -> win you are going to need Recoup. It's that simple. Even though you run Recoup and Gifts both as a one of, Combo Slaver has so many ways to get rid of dead cards you don't really care about drawing into it (Brainstorm + TfK). That aside, it's still not terrible and can always flashback a Merchant Scroll, Demonic, Tinker, Time Walk or a discarded Will if you just draw into it.

[monSt4r]

Sorry about not reading the middle of the posting, but to the doubt of recoup...recently i picked a UB deck with drains, rituals and 4 gifts. So that means no red-no recoup. If you think it's a problem, it's not, cause if I put Will in my gifts pile, with 2 cards from that pile I'm gonna win the game non the less (and if they give me will, you know the result). Maybe it's cause of more threat density of that deck (ritual, necro,bargain...). Maybe this recoup conclusion cannot be put in this way of looking, but early on recoup is a dead card, and later on there are better cards. In conclusion, recoup is good, but in right piles it's very questional...

sorry if i missed something important

[policehq]

I have two questions, primarily related to the importance of Memory Jar's role in the deck. By making statements such as "the deck draws 15 cards a turn," it seems to be of a high priority.

Thus, shouldn't at least one more Goblin Welder be added to ensure you can recur Memory Jar? They're such easy little guys to answer.

Is Memory Jar the primary target for Tinker? I think to maximize the use of Tinker and Goblin Welder, a different artifact fat creature should be played than Darksteel Colossus. Tinker is the only way to get him into play, whereas you could pitch a Sundering Titan and weld him in. That would prevent situations where you get Memory Jar instead of Colossus and losing the game as a result.

-hq

[forests failed you]

The starting point of the deck was to abuse Jar.

Jar is central to this decks path to victory most times.

I don't want more Welders, because he actually isn't completely necessary to win the game.  Often it is enough to just Tinker for Jar, pass with countermagic, untap and win.

Darksteel Colossus is usually a back up plain for if you can't actually kill your opponent after a Yawgmoth's Will.

Welder doesn't do much in this deck.  I've actually considered cutting them altogether for a Merchant Scroll and maybe another bounce spell.  It is randomly busted, and gives you some added broken with Thirst For Knowledge.  Also they randomly become must counter cards when you have a Slaver or a Jar in the yard.  In addition it is often a good play to get back Welders under a Yawgmoth's Will and set up a recurring Slaver situation after the will.  From there you just make a colossus and win.

[Gort32]

Tormod's Crypt is certainly not a random control card. It allows you to go for the Tinker Colossus plan even when you are facing opposing Welders by simply targetting yourself by Crypt.

You forgot one point - the crypt ends up in the new yard as a potential welder target.

Back to the main point though, crypt is still a very useful inclusion - at the very least it an artifact that is good to very good in half of your matches and in the other half it is excellent welder food to grab back the really broken stuff.  In really bizzare situations it can even make a valuable sorcery that was countered early in the match available as a wish target.

[Kowal]

You forgot one point - the crypt ends up in the new yard as a potential welder target.

This is how it works.

1) You announce the effect.
2) You pay all costs.  Tormod's Crypt is sacrificed and it goes to the graveyard.
3) The ability goes on the stack.
4) The ability resolves.  The graveyard along with the crypt is removed from the game.

[LordHomerCat]

The starting point of the deck was to abuse Jar.

Jar is central to this decks path to victory most times.

I don't want more Welders, because he actually isn't completely necessary to win the game.  Often it is enough to just Tinker for Jar, pass with countermagic, untap and win.

Darksteel Colossus is usually a back up plain for if you can't actually kill your opponent after a Yawgmoth's Will.

Welder doesn't do much in this deck.  I've actually considered cutting them altogether for a Merchant Scroll and maybe another bounce spell.  It is randomly busted, and gives you some added broken with Thirst For Knowledge.  Also they randomly become must counter cards when you have a Slaver or a Jar in the yard.  In addition it is often a good play to get back Welders under a Yawgmoth's Will and set up a recurring Slaver situation after the will.  From there you just make a colossus and win.

So if you cut welders, do you keep Mindslaver in the deck?  And if you cut that too, aren't you basically playing Gifts + Memory Jar?  That seems like a pretty big deal to me, and a rather large change as your deck is no longer Slaver (although every new version is already getting less and less slaver-like).  How carefully have you actually considered the welder-less plan?

[forests failed you]

Well, Welders do play a role.  But it isn't the central role that they play in a traditional Slaver list.

When I play Gifts with TFK and Tinker I always play a Slaver.  Its just too powerful of an effect to not play in my opinion.

The main reason Welder is in the deck is to Recur Jar.  The interaction between Jar and Welder is insane.  You actually can't lose if you draw fifteen cards in one turn.

[CrashTest]

LED can be pretty useful for getting black when you are trying to go off with Tendrils - but is 4 fetches the right number? Most decks seem to play 5 - and usually 3 Volcanics and 2 Seas. This deck is heavier on red than the typical Control Slaver build, with Burning Wish, Recoup, along with the usual Welder.

      Would adding the 5th fetch or a 3rd Volcanic make the deck smoother? I have tested a bit with this - and the mana base seems to work a little bit better, although it runs into more trouble vs decks that attack your non-basics, but it is a minimal difference.