[Post-FS Deck Discussion] Hulk Flash, Hulk Smash

[Kieranwolf]

Cutting MisD might work. Maybe even one Summoner's Pact, since 4 Hulk + 3 SP should mean you realistically always draw one.

Basically, having Echoing Truth and Chain means that even Leyline + Chalice @ 1 is nothing to you. Chalice @ 2 and Leyline is only slightly worse, because you can just 1cc tutor for CoV.

They'd need double Chalice and Leyline out, and you'd still be able to copy CoV on the Chalice @ 2 and cast Truth on the Leyline to win.

Seems like this deck is even more resilient to hate than WGDX was.

[Implacable]

The power was flickering on/off at my house yesterday, so I sat about stewing, thinking about criticisms raised in this thread.  Thinking about it, I delved into the Menendian archives in search of a quote.  I found a good one:

"In that example, Grim Long has an insane turn 1 play, but Gifts just wins first. I've seen that happen more times than I can count now. Grim Long also has a weakness against these hybrid combo decks that can win almost as fast as Grim Long, but have twice the disruption. If a combo deck can throw Duress and Force of Will at Grim Long then it might be able to slow the game down long enough so that it can win on turn 2 or 3, while Grim Long sits helpless. One potential solution would be to play Pitch Long on a five-color manabase. If you take that route, I would cut the Infernal Contract and play Regrowth or Wheel of Fortune. However, it still has the drawback of being somewhat vulnerable to Duress and Split Second cards."

-Steven Menendian, February 12th, 2007

Now, the above quote relates to the Gifts v. Long matchup, but what it is really talking about is a deck that can squash combo while comboing off itself.  This is that deck.  When I say things like 'this deck may goldfish similarly [to Meandeck Tendrils]', do you believe that I am just making that number up in order to make a rhetorical point?  I readily acknowledge that this deck cannot match a 60% Turn 1 kill measure; however, it kills ~100% of the time that it does draw Flash in its opening hand (which is 40% of the time), needs only two mana, and statistically is essentially certain to kill by Turn 2, just like Meandeck Tendrils.  The critical difference, as Menendian writes above, is that Hulk Flash is what I consider the epitome of the 'combo-control' archetype, in that it has a huge number of protection spells while also having a combo that is, even with having to Scroll for protection, almost always found by Turn 2-3.  Furthermore, as soon as its combo is in hand, it usually has sufficient counterspells to protect it against any deck ever made for this format, excluding perhaps BBS.  The deck controls other combo decks, easily fends off control, and the Fish matchup is downright funny (P1: Tundra, Isamaru.  P2: Island, Mox, Flash.  Are we playing the same format?).  There seems to be a recurring theme of people saying 'seems to be' when talking about this deck.  Now, it is one thing to refuse to test every deck that is posted on these forums; that is reasonable, as many of this lists are untuned or unviable.  However, decks that people can demonstrate, with hard testing results, to be highly competitive in the format should be tested.  Test Hulk Flash, and figure out for yourself if I'm high on hyperbole.

[Midknight]

I notice the builds run alot of tutor cards. I am thinking maybe some of these should be replaced by more protection spells like Unmask or draw. Heres a list all of the tutors.

4 Summoner's Pact
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Tutor

Does this deck really need 12 Tutors? Summoner's Pact, Mystical Tutor, and Imperial Seal are the ones im thinking about cutting. In theory, you should have one combo piece in every 7.5 cards and a tutor every 5 cards.

Along with the card draw, and with so many tutors, it looks like it may clog your hand up.

I cant get my black count high enough to make unmask effective. Maybe some of the tutors could be replace by card draw, like Street Wraith.

Should Time Walk and or Benevolent Bodyguard be included in the built? What do you guys think?

[Purple Hat]

it kills ~100% of the time that it does draw Flash in its opening hand (which is 40% of the time), needs only two mana, and statistically is essentially certain to kill by Turn 2, just like Meandeck Tendrils. 

it kills by turn 2 in 100% of the games where its top 8 cards contain 2 mana sources, flash, protean hulk/summoners pact.  Sure.  I'm not saying it doesn't.  what I AM saying is that even with all those cards very well represented in your deck this is not something that happens 90% of the time.  there will be a not insignificant number of cases where this deck will have to use a turn to scroll for flash, which because it has two lands instead of a land and a mox, it couldn't do on turn 1.  that pushes your kill back to turn 3.  this is obvious from a quick look at the list and is quicly verified by a short goldfish session.  whether the deck turns out to be bad or not is a seperate issue, I'm convinced there's a good flash deck, I'm not convinced this is it.  I'm also convinced that this deck doesn't go off before the end of turn two 90+% of the time which is what you're claiming.  I've goldfished it a bunch, and I'm willing to admit it's fast, but if you have to tutor for flash or you don't have a protean hulk/summoners pact/second mana source in your top 8 cards you're not gonna win on turn 2.  I'm not trying to run the deck down but there's no way that this deck assembles and casts a two card combo at the rate you're claiming, and that's what I'm finding in my goldfishes.  if you start talking about protection then we get into the fact that you literally need to assemble a specific set of 5 or 6 out of 8 cards by the end of turn 2 to go off.  I'm not saying it doesn't happen.  I'm saying it doesn't happen 90% of the time.

[diopter]

After some deliberation and some preliminary testing, I think the real key of Flash is to get its manabase right. The deck is good at handing you free wins, so don't compensate by making it hand you free losses. So without much further ado, the version of Flash that I have been testing, which has given me nice results:

4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
3 Island
1 Underground Sea

1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
5 Mox
1 Elvish Spirit Guide

4 Flash
4 Protean Hulk
1 Kiki-Jiki
1 Karmic Guide
1 Carrion Feeder
1 Body Snatcher

4 Merchant Scroll
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Street Wraith
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Mystical Tutor

4 Force of Will
2 Pact of Negation
1 Chain of Vapor

The manabase is pretty solid with 11 lands and room for more in the sideboard. Benevolent Bodyguard in the sideboard. I keep waffling between Pact and Duress - Duress is good against Trickbind but dammit, Pact is free. In any case, I'm not too concerned about Trickbind to begin with, that card doesn't appear too often pre-board.

It's rough around the edges, but it's a good foundation.

Couple more notes:
- I like having all the tutors. You can assemble your nut hands more often, and nearly the only thing that can beat your nut hands is Ritual combo nut hands.
- Street Wraith is pretty good in this deck too.

[Midknight]

After testing, the deck does needs Summoner's pact, for the fast wins, its free and goes directly to hand. I have been testing without Mystical Tutor and Imperial Seal, there card disavantage.

Whats so great about Elvish Spirit Guide? I know it tutors with Summoner's Pact. Does helps agaisnt Sphere of Resistance. If its in play, your still going to have to pay a mana to cast the tutor. All it adds is colorless mana.

I think 20 mana sources is alittle high, and the other builds mention earlier were to low. Your built, with the 20 mana sources plus Street Wraith seems high.

I think 19 mana sources, for the version that doesn't run Street Wraith is good. Its working for me, thats what I run. If I found room to add a set of Street Wraiths I would cut it down to 18.

[diopter]

After testing, the deck does needs Summoner's pact, for the fast wins, its free and goes directly to hand. I have been testing without Mystical Tutor and Imperial Seal, there card disavantage.

Whats so great about Elvish Spirit Guide? I know it tutors with Summoner's Pact. Does helps agaisnt Sphere of Resistance. If its in play, your still going to have to pay a mana to cast the tutor. All it adds is colorless mana.

I think 20 mana sources is alittle high, and the other builds mention earlier were to low. Your built, with the 20 mana sources plus Street Wraith seems high.

I think 19 mana sources, for the version that doesn't run Street Wraith is good. Its working for me, thats what I run. If I found room to add a set of Street Wraiths I would cut it down to 18.

Basically my goal was to minimize the odds of the deck punting on itself.

ESG
The inclusion of ESG turns a whole class of hands from marginal to amazing. You can't do anything about double Hulk hands, but Pact-Hulk hands are now amazing.

The weakness of Pacting for ESG while under 2sphere is strictly a weakness of Pact, not ESG. ESG is actually pretty amazing against 2Sphere.

Mystical Tutor and Imperial Seal
Can't really imagine cutting these cards. They increase the odds of you comboing by turn 2. The card disadvantage is irrelevant since you don't have to invest that many cards into a protected kill - it's assembling the specific set of cards that is difficult.

Manabase
Anything below 20 sources and you start to punt a lot of hands where would have the protected nuts if only you drew a second mana source. At this point I think even 20 sources might be too light.

[Midknight]

This deck does not need many lands, the highest casting cost is Flash, Merchant Scroll, DT and Echoing Truth. Any mana source after the 3-4th one, is almost a complete wasted. Your version doesnt even run Duress. I can see the turn you want to cast Flash, you want to duress them first to make sure its clear, but thats only three mana. I dont know if you fear them trying to blow your lands up every turn with, Wastedland and Strip Mines.

[diopter]

This deck does not need many lands, the highest casting cost is Flash, Merchant Scroll, DT and Echoing Truth. Any mana source after the 3-4th one, is almost a complete wasted. Your version doesnt even run Duress. I can see the turn you want to cast Flash, you want to duress them first to make sure its clear, but thats only three mana. I dont know if you fear them trying to blow your lands up every turn with, Wastedland and Strip Mines.

You need at least one land every game. You obviously can't build your deck to draw exactly one land and one fast mana source every game - plus, in some matchups like Stax you want to have two lands if you're on the draw. You can optimize your deck to either give you a little too much mana, or not enough mana. I would not suggest having a manabase with not enough mana.

In other words, don't be greedy.

[BreathWeapon]

Street Wraith is awful, adding Street Wraith and cutting Duress is losing two fold, first to not being able to see the seventh or sixth card in the opening hand (if you aren't consistently winning on turn 2 with one disruption or turn 3 with two disruption cards you aren't mulliganing enough hands) and second to not being able to defend against Wipe Away, Trickbind and Extirpate.

I cut Mystical Tutor for Mana Crypt, 18 mana sources is more than enough when you can Imperial Seal or Vampiric Tutor for Black Lotus and then cast Merchant Scroll and Flash on your second turn.

[Implacable]

I'm thinking very seriously about cutting Duress for Pact and ending up with a disruption base something like:

4 Force of Will
4 Pact of Negation
3 Misdirection

Or somesuch.  I'm having trouble justifying the mana commitment of Duress, and I think having more Blue cards is also nice.  I think that Street Wraith really is quite good in this deck.  As Justin Walters said in regard to playing Meandeck Tendrils, the key is to just have faith; I guarantee that you'll find the combo pieces or their respective tutors very quickly.

it kills by turn 2 in 100% of the games where its top 8 cards contain 2 mana sources, flash, protean hulk/summoners pact.  Sure.  I'm not saying it doesn't.  what I AM saying is that even with all those cards very well represented in your deck this is not something that happens 90% of the time.  there will be a not insignificant number of cases where this deck will have to use a turn to scroll for flash, which because it has two lands instead of a land and a mox, it couldn't do on turn 1.  that pushes your kill back to turn 3.  this is obvious from a quick look at the list and is quicly verified by a short goldfish session.  whether the deck turns out to be bad or not is a seperate issue, I'm convinced there's a good flash deck, I'm not convinced this is it.  I'm also convinced that this deck doesn't go off before the end of turn two 90+% of the time which is what you're claiming.  I've goldfished it a bunch, and I'm willing to admit it's fast, but if you have to tutor for flash or you don't have a protean hulk/summoners pact/second mana source in your top 8 cards you're not gonna win on turn 2.  I'm not trying to run the deck down but there's no way that this deck assembles and casts a two card combo at the rate you're claiming, and that's what I'm finding in my goldfishes.  if you start talking about protection then we get into the fact that you literally need to assemble a specific set of 5 or 6 out of 8 cards by the end of turn 2 to go off.  I'm not saying it doesn't happen.  I'm saying it doesn't happen 90% of the time.

I apologize for being obtuse, but my testing (and the statistics) show otherwise.  Mathematically, you are almost guaranteed to either have an artifact accelerant or an ESG for Turn 1 Scroll, which means that you will have ~93% of the time have found all your combo pieces and be ready to go off on Turn 2. 

[diopter]

I apologize for being obtuse, but my testing (and the statistics) show otherwise.  Mathematically, you are almost guaranteed to either have an artifact accelerant or an ESG for Turn 1 Scroll, which means that you will have ~93% of the time have found all your combo pieces and be ready to go off on Turn 2. 

Wait just a minute there. If you run 9 accelerants (8 artifacts and an ESG) then you have a 70% chance of having one in your opening hand of seven. 70% is not "almost guaranteed" - I would say 95% is almost guaranteed. As well, you don't always have the Scroll, or the Hulk/Pact. Hell, you don't always have the land - especially if you run only 8 (which gives you just a 65% chance of actually having a land in your opening hand). I don't buy the 93% turn 2 statistic. 70-80%, perhaps.

[Grand Inquisitor]

I don't want to give the impression I think this deck is bad, or fragile, or will be a mere blip on the metagame.  The deck is extremely powerful.  However, comment like:

Basically, having Echoing Truth and Chain means that even Leyline + Chalice @ 1 is nothing to you. Chalice @ 2 and Leyline is only slightly worse, because you can just 1cc tutor for CoV.

...makes this thread very misleading to people who haven't actually tested this deck.

A single piece of disruption like Leyline or Pithing Needle is relatively easy for the deck to win through.  Often, the deck will have the resources to deal with two pieces of hate and still win within the first three turns.  This is amazing for a combo deck with this speed.  No doubt, this is a rare combination of speed and resilience.

However, there are many hands that will fold to the above setup of leyline + chalice.  Further, there are lots of combinations of hate that will shut down even the best hands for Flash.  I haven't tested with reactive answers (counters & stifle effects), since I don't expect they can be effective, but with proactive hate cards you need to take an approach similar to Cron Stax: none of your pieces are completely lethal to your opponent, but you can manufacture them faster than they can answer them.  The resulting game play looks like the 'python strategy', and within a few hours of tinkering it wasn't hard to find fish and workshop lists that could pull about even with this deck.

I'm thinking very seriously about cutting Duress

Perhaps I'm leaping to conclusions, but the fact that you've kept duress in this long hints at a basic lack of understanding of what this deck wants to do.

[BreathWeapon]

I'm thinking very seriously about cutting Duress

Perhaps I'm leaping to conclusions, but the fact that you've kept duress in this long hints at a basic lack of understanding of what this deck wants to do.

Duress is responsible for winning the game against Wipe Away, Trickbind and Extirpate, and you absolutely can not win the game against Split Second with out Duress or Xantid Swarm. Feel free to SB it, but stating that using Duress indicates a basic lack of understanding about this deck hints at a basic lack of PTing and complete ignorance of the deck in T1.5 (the hate is going to be identical). Duress is responsible for discarding those prison pieces, and short of Daze, which sucks against Stax, you don't have any other card that can do that for you.

@Implacable: Street Wraith is awful, MDTendrils and Hulk Flash aren't even comparable to one another; this deck isn't built on the basis of cantripping into your win condition, and I don't even rely on Brainstorming for combo pieces over Brainstorming for disruption, mana and to filter dead cards.

[Grand Inquisitor]

(split second owns this deck)

There's a spectrum at which one end is building the fastest combo deck with no disruption and at the other is building a combo deck that can handle any hate, but goes off much more slowly.  Each strategy must find it's balance.  I think that if Flash tries to compensate against regular hate as well as stuff like MD trickbind, etc it starts to fight an uphill battle.  A prime example of this is that I don't think opening yourself up to wasteland is worth protecting against split second hate.

(duress stops proactive hate)

You entirely missed the thrust of my argument:

none of your pieces are completely lethal to your opponent, but you can manufacture them faster than they can answer them

More often than not, I wasn't mulling to find hate pieces when playing fish or stax against flash, I was trying decide which was the most effective turn 1 disruption out of a number of options.

Flash lost games where it had to use resources to find an answer to turn 1 leyline or pithing needle, and then while it was tutoring, a 2nd or 3rd piece would come down.

[BreathWeapon]

(split second owns this deck)

There's a spectrum at which one end is building the fastest combo deck with no disruption and at the other is building a combo deck that can handle any hate, but goes off much more slowly.  Each strategy must find it's balance.  I think that if Flash tries to compensate against regular hate as well as stuff like MD trickbind, etc it starts to fight an uphill battle.  A prime example of this is that I don't think opening yourself up to wasteland is worth protecting against split second hate.

(duress stops proactive hate)

You entirely missed the thrust of my argument:

none of your pieces are completely lethal to your opponent, but you can manufacture them faster than they can answer them

More often than not, I wasn't mulling to find hate pieces when playing fish or stax against flash, I was trying decide which was the most effective turn 1 disruption out of a number of options.

Flash lost games where it had to use resources to find an answer to turn 1 leyline or pithing needle, and then while it was tutoring, a 2nd or 3rd piece would come down.

Youcan't winagainst Split Second with out Duress, you can win against Wasteland with another land. There's a difference between the opponent using an uncounterable win condition and removing a land that could/couldn't be important. You can't be unprepared for Split Second in this format, I've seen it in T1.5, and it's coming for T1 as soon as people catch up with 1.5 and come to the conclusion that Flash is the DTB.

Pithing Needle? All it does is turn Flash into a Tinker->Colossus with a Protean Hulk, Karmic Guide and Carrion Feeder on the board.

[diopter]

@Implacable: Street Wraith is awful, MDTendrils and Hulk Flash aren't even comparable to one another; this deck isn't built on the basis of cantripping into your win condition, and I don't even rely on Brainstorming for combo pieces over Brainstorming for disruption, mana and to filter dead cards.

Wait wait, what? You have more mana than you do combo pieces. And yet you need the same number of mana sources (two) as combo pieces (also two). You will Brainstorm for combo pieces more than you Brainstorm for mana. Test Street Wraith some more.

Duress vs. Split Second

Honestly Split Second is not a big enough maindeck problem to worry about. Trickbind, Wipe Away, and Extirpate don't see much maindeck play. Your biggest worry in terms of specific hate pre-board is Crypt, and Duress is only marginal against Crypt anyway.

[BreathWeapon]

@Implacable: Street Wraith is awful, MDTendrils and Hulk Flash aren't even comparable to one another; this deck isn't built on the basis of cantripping into your win condition, and I don't even rely on Brainstorming for combo pieces over Brainstorming for disruption, mana and to filter dead cards.

Wait wait, what? You have more mana than you do combo pieces. And yet you need the same number of mana sources (two) as combo pieces (also two). You will Brainstorm for combo pieces more than you Brainstorm for mana. Test Street Wraith some more

Duress vs. Split Second

Honestly Split Second is not a big enough maindeck problem to worry about. Trickbind, Wipe Away, and Extirpate don't see much maindeck play. Your biggest worry in terms of specific hate pre-board is Crypt, and Duress is only marginal against Crypt anyway.

Street Wraith draws one card, Brainstorm draws three cards, and Brainstorm creates card selection and card advantage (removing dead Protean Hulks and kill conditions) where Street Wraith draws one card and then proceeds to lose the game because of it. Brainstorm can save an entire hand, where Street Wraith dooms an otherwise acceptable hand. Land + Brainstorm + Business is about as good as it gets, because the Brainstorm will find the mana and/or the disruption to go off, or it could find an additional Flash etc.

Split Second is a HUGE problem, people in Vintage just aren't aware of it because they aren't paying any attention to Legacy, where people are actually forced to take Flash seriously, and you don't want to SB your Duress and waste SB slots when you can just MD it.

You're literally begging to lose to Sudden Shock.

[diopter]

@Implacable: Street Wraith is awful, MDTendrils and Hulk Flash aren't even comparable to one another; this deck isn't built on the basis of cantripping into your win condition, and I don't even rely on Brainstorming for combo pieces over Brainstorming for disruption, mana and to filter dead cards.

Wait wait, what? You have more mana than you do combo pieces. And yet you need the same number of mana sources (two) as combo pieces (also two). You will Brainstorm for combo pieces more than you Brainstorm for mana. Test Street Wraith some more

Duress vs. Split Second

Honestly Split Second is not a big enough maindeck problem to worry about. Trickbind, Wipe Away, and Extirpate don't see much maindeck play. Your biggest worry in terms of specific hate pre-board is Crypt, and Duress is only marginal against Crypt anyway.

Street Wraith draws one card, Brainstorm draws three cards, and Brainstorm creates card selection and card advantage (removing dead Protean Hulks and kill conditions) where Street Wraith draws one card and then proceeds to lose the game because of it. Brainstorm can save an entire hand, where Street Wraith dooms an otherwise acceptable hand. Land + Brainstorm + Business is about as good as it gets, because the Brainstorm will find the mana and/or the disruption to go off, or it could find an additional Flash etc.

Split Second is a HUGE problem, people in Vintage just aren't aware of it because they aren't paying any attention to Legacy, where people are actually forced to take Flash seriously, and you don't want to SB your Duress and waste SB slots when you can just MD it.

You're literally begging to lose to Sudden Shock.

Who plays Sudden Shock in Vintage?
Breathweapon, you have the Fear. Split Second is not a major maindeck force in Vintage at the moment, don't treat it as such. If and when Split Second rises in popularity and/or strength, that's the time you design Flash differently. Until then, there is no point in weakening your deck.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree on Street Wraith, because it's been awesome in testing.

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

Well, intrigued by the new deck and the claims made here, I used this build for 100 goldfish-games, 50 each on the play and draw:

   3 Underground Sea
        1 Flooded Strand
        4 Polluted Delta
        1 Island

   1 Black Lotus
        1 Lotus Petal
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Elvish Spirit Guide

        1 Misdirection
        4 Pact of Negation
        4 Force of Will

        1 Chain of Vapor

        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Vampiric Tutor
        1 Mystical Tutor
        1 Imperial Seal
        4 Merchant Scroll
        4 Summoner's Pact

        3 Street Wraith
        1 Ancestral Recall
        4 Brainstorm

        1 Carrion Feeder
        1 Karmic Guide
        1 Body Snatcher
        1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

        4 Flash
        4 Protean Hulk


I've tested some PitchLong with Pacts in place of MisD and Wraiths, and PoN impressed me there a lot. Same for Wraith, especially with topdeck tutors.
So when I realized Duress was slowing me down a real lot, I replaced it.
As for Wraith, it's just the perfect deck for it. You're searching to combo-pieces and only a little mana. 56 cards would be great. Sadly, I haven't found anything I'd  really like to cut (I might actually want go to only two Wraiths with another land).
It is probably better to actually create a well balanced 56 than anything else, But so far I'm not sure how. I just know it's not a mana that has to go.

Now, after much BlaBla, here are my results (remember, goldfishing, not playtesting, no real opponent)

Oh yeah,
tX = turn X kill
tXbY = turn X kill with Y active counters

for back up.

on the play 50 games

t1:   =  6  12% 12%
t1:   =  2
t1b1: =  3
t1b2: =  1

t2:   = 24 48% 60%
t2:   =  5
t2b1: = 14
t2b2: =  5

t3:   = 10 20% 80%
t3:   =  2
t3b1: =  3
t3b2: =  5

t4:   =  4 8% 88%
t4:1  =  1
t41b: =  1
T4b2: =  1
t4b3: =  1

later =6 12% 100%

on the draw 50 games

t1:   = 16 32% 32%
t1:   =  3
t1b1: =  9
t1b2: =  4

t2:   = 29 58% 90%
t2:   =  9
t2b1: = 11
t2b2: =  9

t3:   =  3 6% 96%
t3:
t3b1:
t3b2: =  1
t3b3: =  2

t4:   =  0 0% 96%
t4:
t4b1:
t4b2:
t4b3:

later =  2 4% 100%


combined 100 games:

t1:   =  22  22% 22%
t1:   =  5
t1b1: =  12
t1b2: =  5

t2:   = 53 53% 75%
t2:   = 14
t2b1: = 25
t2b2: = 14

t3:   = 13 13% 88%
t3:   =  2
t3b1: =  3
t3b2: =  6
t3b3: =  2

t4:   =  4 4% 92%
t4:1  =  1
t41b: =  1
T4b2: =  1
t4b3: =  1

later =  8 8% 100%


Some interesting tidbits from these results here:

3/4th of all goldfish games end on turn 2 (not the claimed 90%, but not bad)

kills turn 1 through FoW: 17% kills till turn 2 with 1+ backup on the play: 46% (this deck should directly beat single Disruption nearly half the time on the play, just by goldfishing!)

THe deck has continuously more protected than unprotected kills, every single turn.

What makes this deck scary to me is that you can hardly always try to mulligan into double FoW, so if they have it, they have it. And that's 46% of the time. No other combo-deck I've seen so far  Most importantly, many kills without protection could have been the turn after with 1 or even 2 extra disruption-pieces.

In this context, a figure to think about:

kills till turn 2 on the draw against FoW + turn 2 drain: 44%
Even if you get double counter up on turn2, you still loose nearly half of these

games, only 16% of them on turn 1, where you only have one counter.


Fizzles (typically mulligan to oblivion):

8%
Seems kind of reasonable for combo, in my experience.


Now, looking at the goldfishing statistics for speed, this deck isn't something very special. GrimLong and Belcher both provide similar stats. The huge difference lies in the fact that the deck almost always has at least one backup-counter (in 73 of these 100 games to be exact). This is new.If you had an active FOW, you could usually expect to live to reach the next M.Scroll or Mana Drain. Here you can't. Well, make of this what you want, hope it further's the debate. I'll have to find 4 Leyline of the Voids, somewhere, for post Future Sight...

[Implacable]

I'm thinking very seriously about cutting Duress

Perhaps I'm leaping to conclusions, but the fact that you've kept duress in this long hints at a basic lack of understanding of what this deck wants to do.

The list that I originally posted on this thread did not have Duress.  In my posts here, I have not praised Duress as being exceptional.  I moved over to BreathWeapon's list to test it, and because I felt that it was more optimized than my own.  I gave Duress a chance (I don't test very much each day), and it did not prove its worth.  I'm fairly certain that I have a basic understanding of what this deck wants to do.

@ BreathWeapon:
Where I am, Extirpate is rarely played, and Trickbind/Wipe Away not at all.  I may put Duress in the side, but it's going out of the main.  Pact of Negation is just better.

Wait just a minute there. If you run 9 accelerants (8 artifacts and an ESG) then you have a 70% chance of having one in your opening hand of seven. 70% is not "almost guaranteed" - I would say 95% is almost guaranteed. As well, you don't always have the Scroll, or the Hulk/Pact. Hell, you don't always have the land - especially if you run only 8 (which gives you just a 65% chance of actually having a land in your opening hand). I don't buy the 93% turn 2 statistic. 70-80%, perhaps.

9/60= 15%.  15% x 7 = 105%.  I'm not sure where the 70% figure comes from.  Sorry .

Here's the current list that I am working with:

4 Protean Hulk
1 Body Snatcher
1 Carrion Feeder
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Karmic Guide
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

4 Brainstorm
4 Flash
4 Force of Will
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Pact of Negation
4 Summoner's Pact
3 Misdirection
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

6 LoMoxen
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Swamp

Sideboard:
4 Duress
4 Xantid Swarm
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Rebuild
1 Bayou
1 Echoing Truth
1 Tropical Island

Comments on the current list:

1) Once you play Pact, it's hard to go back.  Seriously, this card muscles around Drain decks like nothing else.  In a deck that 'Just Wins (TM)', you don't care about next turn.  It's not so hot against Stax (although it may come in Game 3 if I see R.E.B.'s in Game 2), but it is gold against quite literally every other deck.

2) Echoing Truth?  I really don't see the reason to play this.  No one in their right mind is going to play Chalice@1 against a deck that wins with a 2CC card.  It just doesn't make sense. On the subject of bounce in general, I can go up to 4 bounce if needed post, but that rarely happens.  Also, Hurkyl's Recall is really, really bad.  The only artifact hate you really don't like is Chalice, and Chalice hits Hurkyl's. 

3) On the removal of Leyline from the board:  Why bother?  I can race Ichorid to the Turn 2 finish line unless they have a heavy disruption hand, and if they do, then they have to get to Turn 3.  Ichorid generally just isn't a problem.

4) Xantids have been very good to me post.  One of the problems that PitchLong has is an inability to win counter wars over the long run against decks like Gifts.  Xantid helps solve the pitch-problem.

5) On a side-note, it's interesting to see that a NoPact list of Hulk placed 3rd in Germany this weekend. 

[diopter]

Implacable:

Essentially you count the probability of getting a hand that has none of the 9 accelerants.

51       50       49       48       47       46       45
---   x   ---   x   ---   x   ---   x   ---   x   ---   x   ---    = 0.3.
60       59       58       57       56       55       54

1 minus 0.3 is 0.7, which is the probability that you have at least one acccelerant in your opening 7.

[BreathWeapon]

@Implacable: Street Wraith is awful, MDTendrils and Hulk Flash aren't even comparable to one another; this deck isn't built on the basis of cantripping into your win condition, and I don't even rely on Brainstorming for combo pieces over Brainstorming for disruption, mana and to filter dead cards.

Wait wait, what? You have more mana than you do combo pieces. And yet you need the same number of mana sources (two) as combo pieces (also two). You will Brainstorm for combo pieces more than you Brainstorm for mana. Test Street Wraith some more

Duress vs. Split Second

Honestly Split Second is not a big enough maindeck problem to worry about. Trickbind, Wipe Away, and Extirpate don't see much maindeck play. Your biggest worry in terms of specific hate pre-board is Crypt, and Duress is only marginal against Crypt anyway.

Street Wraith draws one card, Brainstorm draws three cards, and Brainstorm creates card selection and card advantage (removing dead Protean Hulks and kill conditions) where Street Wraith draws one card and then proceeds to lose the game because of it. Brainstorm can save an entire hand, where Street Wraith dooms an otherwise acceptable hand. Land + Brainstorm + Business is about as good as it gets, because the Brainstorm will find the mana and/or the disruption to go off, or it could find an additional Flash etc.

Split Second is a HUGE problem, people in Vintage just aren't aware of it because they aren't paying any attention to Legacy, where people are actually forced to take Flash seriously, and you don't want to SB your Duress and waste SB slots when you can just MD it.

You're literally begging to lose to Sudden Shock.

Who plays Sudden Shock in Vintage?
Breathweapon, you have the Fear. Split Second is not a major maindeck force in Vintage at the moment, don't treat it as such. If and when Split Second rises in popularity and/or strength, that's the time you design Flash differently. Until then, there is no point in weakening your deck.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree on Street Wraith, because it's been awesome in testing.

That's the point, people are going to go "Sudden Shock in Vintage?!" and then lose to it, because it's one of the best SB cards against Flash, considering it doubles as a SB card against Fish, and people aren't going to bother preparing for it. How can people consider a Post-FS deck, and then respond with Pre-FS evaluations of their environment with their disruption? You don't think that people are going to see the obvious hole in your pitch counters and punish you with split second? I don't have "the fear," I have "the foresight" from 1.5.

Feel free to use Pact of Negation over Duress in the MD, but not SBing Duress or Xantid Swarm is suicide.

[Grand Inquisitor]

I don't have "the fear," I have "the foresight" from 1.5

Perhaps you have the "future sight"?    (sorry mods)

@Mons, given the strong results from your goldfishing, have you tried it out against real competition?

@Implacable, sorry about the misattribution on duress.

[demonic effect]

maybe i'm missing something but I see a TON of logical fallacies being presented

9/60= 15%.  15% x 7 = 105%.  I'm not sure where the 70% figure comes from.  Sorry Sad.

Your statistics imply that you have an accelerant over 100% of the time...  Since less than 1/6th of your deck is an accelerant I truly do not see how this can be true...  At the least, there will be goldfish hands that come up two land, 1 land and no accelerant, etc...  It just simple facts...  Please learn more about math before making such an obvious error

Echoing Truth?  I really don't see the reason to play this.  No one in their right mind is going to play Chalice@1 against a deck that wins with a 2CC card.  It just doesn't make sense. On the subject of bounce in general, I can go up to 4 bounce if needed post, but that rarely happens.  Also, Hurkyl's Recall is really, really bad.  The only artifact hate you really don't like is Chalice, and Chalice hits Hurkyl's.

You may not see the reason, but its called a "plan b"...  99% of the time you may scroll for a Chain of Vapor...  But in the case that they have LotV and a chalice at 1 it would be nice to have some means of removing it even if echoing truth is not normally your first choice of bounce spell...  Overall, it should hardly affect game play considering how rarely you'd draw it and, when you do, will be as useful as chain...  The minor inconvenience of it costing 1 more to play is offset by versatility.

3) On the removal of Leyline from the board:  Why bother?  I can race Ichorid to the Turn 2 finish line unless they have a heavy disruption hand, and if they do, then they have to get to Turn 3.  Ichorid generally just isn't a problem.

If they have Leyline on the board how do you win?  you have to have some means of removing it which takes time (maybe you have flash and not scroll or chain of vapor in hand)  This allows the Ichorid player to get to turn 3 and destroy you with some minor disruption (flashbacked therapies) in the mean time due to bridge and narcomoeba...

I'm not saying that this is a bad matchup... I'm merely saying that they have more tools to hurt you than you give them credit for... If you have the nuts, then who cares... but you won't always have them so you need resiliency.

Xantids have been very good to me post.  One of the problems that PitchLong has is an inability to win counter wars over the long run against decks like Gifts.  Xantid helps solve the pitch-problem.

How do you find xantid?  will he come up often enough that it won't matter?  How do you play him with no lands that produce green?  You have ESG and Pact... but the ESG is too rare w/o the pact which will probably be used to find xantid (summoning sickness makes pact bad as a search tool for either with the goal of playing xantids).

What counter wars are you losing?  you have 4 PoN 4 FoW and 3 Misdirections...  Since you are going off turn 1-2 (hopefully) they shouldn't have drain mana open and when they do often they won't have FoW back up...  Even IF they do, you still have a good chance of being able to defend the combo.

Youcan't winagainst Split Second with out Duress, you can win against Wasteland with another land. There's a difference between the opponent using an uncounterable win condition and removing a land that could/couldn't be important. You can't be unprepared for Split Second in this format, I've seen it in T1.5, and it's coming for T1 as soon as people catch up with 1.5 and come to the conclusion that Flash is the DTB.

Pithing Needle? All it does is turn Flash into a Tinker->Colossus with a Protean Hulk, Karmic Guide and Carrion Feeder on the board.

Yea and as you stated... We play type 1 not type 1.5...  The difference comes from a variety of decks/resiliency strategies meaning we can't always pick "the best" hate against any one deck but must pick a card that is slightly weaker but hits many different decks...  Part of this decision comes from testing the mana curve of various cards and the overall importance of the card...  I can compare trickbind to stifle in fish and realize that i would rather use stifle so I can play another threat more consistently...  If stifle is countered, oh well... I use it more to stop fetch's than tendril's and so I'd be willing to let them counter it knowing that that's one less counter for me to worry about so I can stop their true threats...  Similarly, why play wipe away when chain of vapor costs 1U less?

This is not to say that split second isn't the shit, but you have to weigh varying factors before determining it is THE way to go which is why some decks use it and others don't.

In Type 1.5, flash has increased the speed dramatically something that we in vintage are use to due to much more acceleration and thus Hulk.dec, while arguably better than some other combo decks, isn't THAT much faster because other decks still win turn 1...  As such, while still a beast of a deck, it does not mean that ALL hate is centered around how to best beat hulk...  Coffin purge, Leyline, crypt, StP, darkblast (on carrion feeder) are all direct hate that are used relatively often and attack various parts of the deck.  This goes beyond the "other" means of beating the deck such as Chalice, SoR, etc...

I forget who said it, but it was in this post and frankly i'm too lazy to scroll up and find it at the moment...  But they commented that Hulk has a lot of disruption, but, that the disruption is used to protect the combo while going off...  This is problematic because a lot of vintage uses hate cards to slow down an opponent pre-emptively rather than reactively...

Ex.  You are on the draw and your hand is Land, mox, scroll, summoner's pact, FoW, Imperial Seal, carrion feeder

Overall, this hand has a little bit of everything but isn't the nuts...  First turn scroll, second turn win with Seal and FoW as back-up (seal to find the combo piece that was countered)...  Should you keep the hand?  The hand combines disruption, with resiliency and has all of the components necessary to win...

Chalice @ 0 is a very common play in vintage and would completely screw this hand...  It means you can't activate pact... your mox can't be played leading to flash etc..  It leaves you with two options...
      1.  FoW it meaning you no longer have a scroll to search for flash with delaying the combo for a bit since you have limited mana sources in play (and are unlikely to draw too many more) and will need to use imperial seal to look for an answer so you can use pact and your mox...
      2.  Let it resolve and cast seal for an answer...  This leaves you open to counters on the "answer" or further hate that you simply would NOT be able to deal with.

Keep in mind, that of all of the counters, only FoW is a good answer for permenant hate...

Similarly, wasteland (since underground sea would probably be fetched so Seal could be used), could absolutely destroy the hand...

In effect, I find the deck to be incredibly resilient in defending the combo, but not at stopping pre-emptive hate...   Even duress can drastically harm the hand...  The numbers are such that you should have 1 of all of the cards you need for the combo in your opening hand...  If anything disrupts that plan, then, because of limited draw, it can be hard to recover.

[diopter]

That's the point, people are going to go "Sudden Shock in Vintage?!" and then lose to it, because it's one of the best SB cards against Flash, considering it doubles as a SB card against Fish, and people aren't going to bother preparing for it. How can people consider a Post-FS deck, and then respond with Pre-FS evaluations of their environment with their disruption? You don't think that people are going to see the obvious hole in your pitch counters and punish you with split second? I don't have "the fear," I have "the foresight" from 1.5.

Feel free to use Pact of Negation over Duress in the MD, but not SBing Duress or Xantid Swarm is suicide.

I pretty much said that Split Second was not a maindeck factor in Vintage. This is true now and will be true post-FS, because the split second cards are too narrow for widespread maindeck use. Post-board is an entirely different story, I never said otherwise.

[Implacable]

maybe i'm missing something but I see a TON of logical fallacies being presented

9/60= 15%.  15% x 7 = 105%.  I'm not sure where the 70% figure comes from.  Sorry Sad.

Your statistics imply that you have an accelerant over 100% of the time...  Since less than 1/6th of your deck is an accelerant I truly do not see how this can be true...  At the least, there will be goldfish hands that come up two land, 1 land and no accelerant, etc...  It just simple facts...  Please learn more about math before making such an obvious error

Now, to be certain, I am no mathematical genius, but it's certain that statistical probalities != reality.  As I understand it (and it's possible that I don't, so correct me), the fact that 1 out of every 6.67 cards is statistically a mana accelerant means that drawing a 7 card hand without a mana accelerant is a statistical improbability.  Right?  I'm not saying that it never happens, and I prefaced my claims with the 'statistical' and 'statistically'.  If I somehow misunderstand, please tell me.

Echoing Truth?  I really don't see the reason to play this.  No one in their right mind is going to play Chalice@1 against a deck that wins with a 2CC card.  It just doesn't make sense. On the subject of bounce in general, I can go up to 4 bounce if needed post, but that rarely happens.  Also, Hurkyl's Recall is really, really bad.  The only artifact hate you really don't like is Chalice, and Chalice hits Hurkyl's.

You may not see the reason, but its called a "plan b"...  99% of the time you may scroll for a Chain of Vapor...  But in the case that they have LotV and a chalice at 1 it would be nice to have some means of removing it even if echoing truth is not normally your first choice of bounce spell...  Overall, it should hardly affect game play considering how rarely you'd draw it and, when you do, will be as useful as chain...  The minor inconvenience of it costing 1 more to play is offset by versatility.

I don't really see why anyone would Chalice@0 vs. Hulk.  That seems nonsensical. It hits neither the accelerants nor the combo, and I can still go off through it very easily.  I'm simply not worried about it.  However, if the deck I play against is playing Chalice, I usually will side in the Truth Game 2.  The reason that I play 2:0 as opposed to 1:1 is that the Hulk deck, while not vulnerable in its manabase, is very light in its manabase, and even 1 extra mana is sometimes difficult to get.

3) On the removal of Leyline from the board:  Why bother?  I can race Ichorid to the Turn 2 finish line unless they have a heavy disruption hand, and if they do, then they have to get to Turn 3.  Ichorid generally just isn't a problem.

If they have Leyline on the board how do you win?  you have to have some means of removing it which takes time (maybe you have flash and not scroll or chain of vapor in hand)  This allows the Ichorid player to get to turn 3 and destroy you with some minor disruption (flashbacked therapies) in the mean time due to bridge and narcomoeba...

I'm not saying that this is a bad matchup... I'm merely saying that they have more tools to hurt you than you give them credit for... If you have the nuts, then who cares... but you won't always have them so you need resiliency.

Game 2 against Ichorid (with the list that I am using), I have 4 bounce spells, 4 Scrolls, DT, IS, MS, and VT.  I think that that should be enough (hopefully).

Xantids have been very good to me post.  One of the problems that PitchLong has is an inability to win counter wars over the long run against decks like Gifts.  Xantid helps solve the pitch-problem.

How do you find xantid?  will he come up often enough that it won't matter?  How do you play him with no lands that produce green?  You have ESG and Pact... but the ESG is too rare w/o the pact which will probably be used to find xantid (summoning sickness makes pact bad as a search tool for either with the goal of playing xantids).

What counter wars are you losing?  you have 4 PoN 4 FoW and 3 Misdirections...  Since you are going off turn 1-2 (hopefully) they shouldn't have drain mana open and when they do often they won't have FoW back up...  Even IF they do, you still have a good chance of being able to defend the combo.

Often times, it can be painful to fight the opponent with pitch counterspells, simply because you throw away things you really don't like to lose.  Xantid eliminates that problem.  However, I do respect and acknowledge the fact that they are sometimes extraneous, and may replace them with something else.  In testing, they have been solid.

[Imsomniac101]

maybe i'm missing something but I see a TON of logical fallacies being presented

Quote

9/60= 15%.  15% x 7 = 105%.  I'm not sure where the 70% figure comes from.  Sorry Sad.

Your statistics imply that you have an accelerant over 100% of the time...  Since less than 1/6th of your deck is an accelerant I truly do not see how this can be true...  At the least, there will be goldfish hands that come up two land, 1 land and no accelerant, etc...  It just simple facts...  Please learn more about math before making such an obvious error

Now, to be certain, I am no mathematical genius, but it's certain that statistical probalities != reality.  As I understand it (and it's possible that I don't, so correct me), the fact that 1 out of every 6.67 cards is statistically a mana accelerant means that drawing a 7 card hand without a mana accelerant is a statistical improbability.  Right?  I'm not saying that it never happens, and I prefaced my claims with the 'statistical' and 'statistically'.  If I somehow misunderstand, please tell me.

High school math here. The correct math is:
1-(51!53!)/(60!44!) = 0.7 probability of opening a hand with at least one accelerant. The probability cannot exceed 1 because a probability of 1 implies that an event is certain to occur. The fault in your math is that you're not accounting for each draw to your opening 7.

I don't really see why anyone would Chalice@0 vs. Hulk.  That seems nonsensical. It hits neither the accelerants nor the combo, and I can still go off through it very easily.  I'm simply not worried about it.  However, if the deck I play against is playing Chalice, I usually will side in the Truth Game 2.  The reason that I play 2:0 as opposed to 1:1 is that the Hulk deck, while not vulnerable in its manabase, is very light in its manabase, and even 1 extra mana is sometimes difficult to get.

How does chalice at 0 not affect your mana base????

[demonic effect]

The reason that I play 2:0 as opposed to 1:1 is that the Hulk deck, while not vulnerable in its manabase, is very light in its manabase, and even 1 extra mana is sometimes difficult to get.

For the most part you will be tutoring for the answer.  On average, you will be using a 2cc card to search for echoing truth.  This means that you already have the mana needed to play echoing truth.  In the cases that you only have 1 mana and happen to have only a 1cc tutor then you can still search for chain of vapor...  In other words, the only time that this truly COULD be an issue is when you are short on land and happen to have drawn the echoing truth instead of of chain of vapor rather than tutoring for it which is a very improbable situation overall considering its a 1 of and "statistically" you should have at least 2 mana;)  If not, then you probably would mulligan the hand anyway...

Game 2 against Ichorid (with the list that I am using), I have 4 bounce spells, 4 Scrolls, DT, IS, MS, and VT.  I think that that should be enough (hopefully).

I'm not saying the ichorid matchup is bad (I have yet to test it)... I am merely saying that you shouldn't discount it either...  If they drop LLvoid then you probably will spend a turn either dealing with it or searching for an answer delaying your clock for a turn or 2 at the least just to play the answers...  At the same time, the Ichorid player will still be using their basic game plan to dump a bunch of cards into the gy...  Almost immediately this means they can Therapy if they get Narcomeoba or a turn or 2 later through ichorid etc...  This really begins to hurt as they continually deny you from using your lock pieces while they just "combo" out...  This is made exceptionally possible by the fact that Hulk.dec doesn't use a lot of draw preferring quality over quantity and that it has such a light mana base and thus can't play many things at once to force through hate.

Quote
Quote
Xantids have been very good to me post.  One of the problems that PitchLong has is an inability to win counter wars over the long run against decks like Gifts.  Xantid helps solve the pitch-problem.

How do you find xantid?  will he come up often enough that it won't matter?  How do you play him with no lands that produce green?  You have ESG and Pact... but the ESG is too rare w/o the pact which will probably be used to find xantid (summoning sickness makes pact bad as a search tool for either with the goal of playing xantids).

What counter wars are you losing?  you have 4 PoN 4 FoW and 3 Misdirections...  Since you are going off turn 1-2 (hopefully) they shouldn't have drain mana open and when they do often they won't have FoW back up...  Even IF they do, you still have a good chance of being able to defend the combo.

Often times, it can be painful to fight the opponent with pitch counterspells, simply because you throw away things you really don't like to lose.  Xantid eliminates that problem.  However, I do respect and acknowledge the fact that they are sometimes extraneous, and may replace them with something else.  In testing, they have been solid.

That doesn't answer my point...  If it has been good in testing please explain my questions...
    !.  How do you find Xantid with little to no draw and w/o the use of Summoner's Pact...
    2. If you tutor for Xantid's, how often do you find that you also needed that tutor to find a combo piece?  This would slow the deck down too much and make it pointless
    3. I understand that pitch counters will hurt you in long drawn out counter wars... But since this deck tends to win turn 1-2 on average (that's its aim) how many counterspells are they playing that can hurt you?  Most likely just FoW... For the most part, fish is the deck with the highest pitch counter rate and it is almost the same as yours replacing PoN with Daze...  At the least its an even fight and in most cases you should be well ahead (on average).
    4.  I still don't know how you play Xantid apart from emerald, lotus, and 1 ESG...  Maybe I'm looking at a different list since so many have been posted on this thread but please explain.
    5.  If your main concern was merely over the counter war once flash resolves and the combo has begun (only way xantid would have haste) then you can just give all of your creatures protection from everything instead of worrying about an StP which started the counter war
T  6.  How is Xantid not too slow due to the whole summoning sickness thing?  Like the reason most people don't use him now is because of the side hate like lava dart, darkblast, etc... Summoning sickness gives the opponent time to look for answers, put down more hate, win, etc...

I pretty much said that Split Second was not a maindeck factor in Vintage. This is true now and will be true post-FS, because the split second cards are too narrow for widespread maindeck use. Post-board is an entirely different story, I never said otherwise.

That's cool and all, but it still doesn't address the fact that you are looking to hit multiple decks with your SB cards and thus you must weigh a lot of different factors...  Hulk.dec is one of the few decks I think split second to be necessary for although there are definately many situations that it may be beneficial against other decks...  Even against Hulk.Dec, often I can play other disruption cards to slow the game down or to force them to use their only counterspell on stopping that piece of hate meaning that a stifle is 90% as useful as trickbind etc...  Couple this with Stifle needing less mana, the matches that stifle helps against .dec and of those matches the 1 mana being critical as a difference etc...  (the fish/stifle example is merely an example not actual stats)  To merely say a split second card is a SB tech card requires much deeper analysis of not only the deck you are playing but comparisons between the split second card and the other cards in terms of matchups...  Why play wipe away for example when the matchups i'll side it in against don't have counters?  Why not just play chain of vapor etc..  Remember, I made the argument that type 1 is vastly different than type 1.5 and that we not only have access to more cards, but the vintage community is already used to dealing with fast decks...  As such, a turn 1 SoR followed up by Chalice at 0, turn 2 smokestack or some such would also be sufficient to cripple your deck (i doubt stax will side in trickbind and extirpate isn't necessary due to the monored revolution... please give us detailed analysis as to why this is necessary... what decks should use it... comparisons etc...

[diopter]

I've found that Chalice @ 0 is a pain in the ass for Hulk, especially for the builds with 18 mana. It rapes half your manabase, which means the Scroll that you would have used to find that Chain of Vapor sits useless in your hand. Splash damage on Summoner's Pact too, meaning that the odds of you just rawdogging Flash and Hulk and 2 lands for the lucksack win is reduced.

The Flash manabases need some serious work.

I pretty much said that Split Second was not a maindeck factor in Vintage. This is true now and will be true post-FS, because the split second cards are too narrow for widespread maindeck use. Post-board is an entirely different story, I never said otherwise.

That's cool and all, but it still doesn't address the fact that you are looking to hit multiple decks with your SB cards and thus you must weigh a lot of different factors...  Hulk.dec is one of the few decks I think split second to be necessary for although there are definately many situations that it may be beneficial against other decks...  Even against Hulk.Dec, often I can play other disruption cards to slow the game down or to force them to use their only counterspell on stopping that piece of hate meaning that a stifle is 90% as useful as trickbind etc...  Couple this with Stifle needing less mana, the matches that stifle helps against .dec and of those matches the 1 mana being critical as a difference etc...  (the fish/stifle example is merely an example not actual stats)  To merely say a split second card is a SB tech card requires much deeper analysis of not only the deck you are playing but comparisons between the split second card and the other cards in terms of matchups...  Why play wipe away for example when the matchups i'll side it in against don't have counters?  Why not just play chain of vapor etc..  Remember, I made the argument that type 1 is vastly different than type 1.5 and that we not only have access to more cards, but the vintage community is already used to dealing with fast decks...  As such, a turn 1 SoR followed up by Chalice at 0, turn 2 smokestack or some such would also be sufficient to cripple your deck (i doubt stax will side in trickbind and extirpate isn't necessary due to the monored revolution... please give us detailed analysis as to why this is necessary... what decks should use it... comparisons etc...

Really when I think about Split Second cards I think about Extirpate and to a much lesser extent Trickbind - these are the only two cards that are actually flexible and aggresively costed enough for consideration. But neither of these cards is great in the main deck because they are just not flexible enough - for instance Trickbind isn't worth the cardboard it's printed on against Stax, Slaver, or Fish, and Extirpate barely affects Ritual combo or Stax or Fish.

Post-board however, Extirpate can be a surgical strike against several decks (Flash, Ichorid, Dragon) if - and this is the key - if they aren't prepared for it. I still find Trickbind marginal, although it's a moot point because the same strategy that answers Extirpate also answers Trickbind.

I think that having something like Duress, which is good against Split Second but also just good in general, is a good tool in the post-board games where you have a statistically significant probability of encountering Split Second. Having it in the maindeck though is paying unnecessary mana to answer a threat that don't exist.