TK DeezNauts

[The Duressed]

This deck posted some impressive results last weekend. For those of you who don't know, it took 5th and 7th place at SCG Chicago (Day one). I'll start with the decklists.

Owen Turtenwald, 5th place.

1 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Trinket Mage

1 Ancestral Recall
4 Brainstorm
4 Force Of Will
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Stifle
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Duress
1 Life From The Loam
3 Thoughtseize
1 Time Walk
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Tormod's Crypt

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Snow-covered Island
1 Bayou
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
1 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
3 Wasteland

Sideboard:
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Pithing Needle
3 Trygon Predator
4 Leyline Of The Void
3 Threads Of Disloyalty
2 Duress
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Jake Kempfer (7th place) played a very similar build. The only differences were that Jake played 2/2 Thoughtseize/Duress, and in the sideboard he cut a Threads for a Pernicious Deed.

This deck plays a number of things that are rather uninteresting and obvious, and yet there are a few things that I, at least, was shocked to see played. Read on, ladies and gentlemen, read on!

Creatures
The first thing that I noticed when looking at this deck was, obviously, the quad Tarmogoyf. It seems very indicative of the direction that the metagame is going. Creatures are more popular than Tendrils and Empty, despite the fact that they're slower and perhaps not as bomb-tastic. The choice to play only 1 Dreadnought makes sense, as you can easily tutor one up with your triple Trinket Mage. Who wants a Dreadnought when you've got no Stifle? Also, Dark Confidant is still the best card-drawing creature in vintage. Overall, it's a very solid creature suite.

Control Cards
There aren't many surprises here. Force of Will is an auto-include, Stifle is there for obvious reasons (not just for Dreadnought; this card is still one of the best land-destruction spells in vintage right now). There are the usual candidates for Trinket targets that go into most decks that run them, of course, and the Duresses are no surprise. What was surprising, however, was the addition of a singleton Life from the Loam. I hadn't thought of this possibility at all, honestly. The synergy with the rest of the deck is really almost stunning. It makes Tarmogoyf bigger, and makes Wasteland insane. Fascinating.

Card Advantage
The draw spells and abilities here are nothing new, but that doesn't make them any less powerful. In fact, they're so widely used because they're hard to surpass. Brainstorm is as good as it's ever been, and a singleton Top is still good. As I said earlier, Dark Confidant is probably the best card-drawing creature in vintage at this time.


Over all, I'd have to say that I'm impressed with this deck. There are synergies everywhere, the clock is at least as powerful as most Quirion Dryads, and the control suite is tuned. I'm not at all surprised, looking back, that this deck has been starting to have some real success. Granted, hindsight is usually 20/20 

What are your guys' thoughts? Streamlined? Randomly lucky? I'd love to hear the opinions of the rest of you.

[Moxlotus]

GWS has tested against the deck for a while and it was very powerful.  There were no glaring weaknesses that we found.  It appears to struggle against storm combo sometimes, despite having a bunch of duress, stifle, and force.  This version has upped the blue count which definitely helped I assume, since a trinket mage-less version has a difficult time pitching a blue card.  Goyfs can eat Juggernauts all day which gives it a good matchup against standard shop aggro decks.  Equipment can put the hurt on this deck, so I imagine aggro decks with equipment would fare better than aggro decks that opted for more disruption.  It has Predators in the board which are better than Flux against certain builds, but worse against others. 

This version currently has 0 maindeck ways to remove Platz--a glaring weakness but I assume it was a calculated weakness that was acceptable for that tournament.

I'd be very interested to see how this would do against an Oath build.  Frankly I have no idea how it would do--but I imagine that this could race it a fare amount of time which is impressive for an aggro-control deck.

The rise inThorn and decline in Chalice has made this deck even better since it can cast its threats for 2 mana still. 

The wastelands are surprisingly powerful.  Many games in testing were won with waste lock followed with Life from the Loam.

[Solomox]

I had been playing around with TarmoNought for a month or so.  Granted, it was a bit different from the TK Deez Noughts, but I love it.  When I first saw this version I was a little taken aback by having only 1 Nought and no masks.  Yeah, I was wrong.  This is a deck that just happens to have a Phyrexian Dreadnought and a was to resolve it.  This deck is not only a powerhouse with amazing synergy, it is also amazingly fun to play.  It's highly interactive and very powerful.  Just from my little bit of testing with this version I must agree with the fact that it has no real weaknesses.  (Except for what was just mentioned about not having an answer to the Platz).  Naturally, Stax is a bit of a headache. 

The only decks I have had a hard time with in my testing have been Landstill and Stax.  As for what I've tested against Oath, anything but Tyrant Oath is favorable.  If a tyrant resolves, it's a sad day in Noughtville.  This deck doesn't roll over to welder though, like previous MaskNought builds, but I can see Smother taking 3 - 4 SB places in most decks that run black for this (not to mention the face that Smother is sooo good in the meta right now).  Knowing the dangers, are there any changes that can be made to reduce the collateral damage of numerous Fire/Ice and Smothers ruining a pretty day?

R.I.P. - Morphling
R.I.P. - Psychatog (?)
Welcome to the third age of "Superman".... Tarmogoyf!

 

[The Duressed]

The only guy you're worried about losing to Fire/Ice is Dark Confidant (You don't really care so much about them shooting your Trinket Mage, because by that time, he's already done his job). It definitely seems reasonable to worry about decks bringing in lots of Smothers, but honestly, that's purely a metagame call, in my opinion. If you expect to see infinite Gro-a-Tog, then I'd worry about the smothers. If you expect lots of Workshop aggro and things of that nature, namely, the creatures with CC 4 or greater (Juggernauts, anybody?), then you wouldn't have to worry about it so much.

If I were to take this deck to a tournament tomorrow, I think the only change I'd make would be to regarding the Threads of Disloyalty sideboard slot. I had a couple thoughts for it. 1: Sowers of Temptation. For more (which hardly matters in the relevant matchups, because this guy is so effective against Thorn.dec), it gives you the option of stealing anything (11/11 indestructible creatures are pretty good, I hear, and stealing a Juggernaut may or may not be a total blowout), and also gives you a 2/2 flying creature. It still doesn't die to Smother, bounce still disrupts the plan, REB/Pyro still disrupt the plan; the only real difference is Fire/Ice. 2: Smother. It's a definite answer to Dryads and Goyfs. It's not saved by REB, Pyro, or any bounce spell. That guy is gone, history, end of story. I would pick one of those two.

[Solomox]

Good point.  I'm just so excited that Nought is viable again.  I was a hardcore Vengeur Masque player back in the day.  I remember how bad Smother was.  I've never lost as many games to any other card.  I agree with your point, but it still makes me cringe whenever I see it.  I do like Sower though, so I'll try that out.
I worry about Fire/Ice a lot, due to the fact that Confidant is the main target.

It's all about tempo with this deck though.  If you're playing GAT and they kill a dryad or two the tempo loss is usually back breaking.  This deck has enough creatures to have a lot of threats.  I have won a couple games based solely on Confidant beats. 

The only thing I personally would like to change is more Duresses.  I'm thinking about maybe a 3/2 Duress/Thoughtseize... or even a 4/2.  Is that overkill though?  Is there even anything worth cutting?     

[The Duressed]

In terms of Duress and Thoughtseize effects, I've been a fan recently of a 3/3 split. I'm not entirely sure where I'd look to cut things, though. I think I would start with Mystical Tutor... I'm honestly not sure. Any thoughts?

[TK]

Im happy to see that many of you that have seen the newest version of the deck like it. I cant take all the credit for it though after i had won a local tourney with the goyf version running 4 naughts owen and jeff rabowski did some work on it and they came up with the trinket mage plan which i also liked. The change gave the deck the higher blue card count it needed and made for less dead draws. the only thing that it did negatively was it slightly weekens the stax, gat, and goblins matchups. the quick clock was always a nice threat to rely on. To be honest though the stax and gat matchups are still heavily in your favor you just have to be well versed with the deck.

The strongest concept of this deck is simply having tarmogoyf and dark confidant in the same deck together. these two creatures both offer raw power and work amazing well together.

As far as bad matchups the only mathup i would really not want to sit across from is one of the carps with oath. If they resolve oath its basically game yo have to either race them while they look for oath or jsut effectively use duress/thoughtseize and fow to keep oath off the table, even stifeling oath can by enough time to win a game. other than oath i think the deck has a relatively favorable matchup against everything.

The only real problem is although its great in the current field its not an overly powerful deck. sure it has some broken draws that result in relatively quick wins, but it cant compare to the raw power of something like gat or long combo.

If you are looking for a consistant deck to perform well in this field i would suggest sleaving this up for your next tourney.

[Solomox]

Thanks for the reply TK!  I really enjoy playing the deck.  When cutting the Dreadnoughts from 4 to 1, was it more of a move to simply add the 3 Trinket Mage's for more pitchable blue cards?  Not to mention the fact that they can just search out a Nought.  Or was this a move to turn this into a Confidant/Goyf deck with stifles that just happens to have a Nought that can be played fairly easily?  What I'm really wondering is would more Noughts be added back in to give it more of that "Oops, I just won" lucksack draw?  If so what do you think would be cut?  Keep the fun decks coming!

[Thegreatgonzo]

Looks very solid, I have to test this. Just something I don't understand : why is Yawgmoth's will in the sideboard? Any good reason not to run it maindeck? Also, is tormod's crypt enough when graveyard truly matters? Of course you can fetch it via Trinket mage, but wouldn't some kind of bounce (echoing truth by example) be better instead? Just asking.

The greatgonzo

[Wollblad]

Looks very solid, I have to test this. Just something I don't understand : why is Yawgmoth's will in the sideboard? Any good reason not to run it maindeck?

I was just wondering the same thing. When I first saw this deck, I immediately though: "What a nice deck, but how can Life from the Loam be stronger than Yawgmoth's Will?" I can agree that there are strong arguments for LftL against Stax, but in almost any other matchup, I would prefer Will even if it not tremendously broken.

[TK]

If your looking for the i jsut win facto the deck had with 4 naughts i would jsut make the following changes.

-3 trinets
-1 tormods

+3 naughts
+1 echoing truth

With those changes you pretty much have the deck i won with a few weeks ago.


Yawgwill in the sdeboard seems to be one of those card choices that people seem to shake there head at.

It first made its way into the sdeboard of sullivan solution after sometime. If i remember correctly it was a conversation that I@N and Rich shay had that ended up with will being placed in the sideboard.

Will is in the sideboard of this deck for very much the same reason. You really want the will in 2 machups that ive seen and those are aggro mirrors and control matchups. The reason for this is that these matchups tend to be very long wars where you need to take every advntage you can get. The problem ss had ocasionsly was that if it went to a vry late game with control your strongest play may have been tutor for a creature seeing as your recall was probably already spent at this point, where as they often still had access to will which gve them a huge edge in the late game. By adding will it gives you the late game bomb you need to sure up those matches.

The reason its not maindeck is that its never good in the early game unless you had a ridiculous hand already, and its usually terrible vs decks like flash, combo, ichorid, and only mediocre vs stax really depending on if there are spheres inplay or not.

[The Duressed]

As far as I can tell, Life from the Loam is not there just to bring back your Underground Seas. It's there as an essentially uncounterable Crucible of Worlds to rape your opponent's already delicate land situation with recurring Wasteland and Strip Mine effect. It's totally nuts, and decks will have a hard time countering it because they know it'll be back either next turn or maybe that same turn. It also makes your buddy the Tarmogoyf bigger on every dredging. It's really quite insane, and with 3 available tutors that can target it, 1 is all you'll ever need.

Regarding Tormod's Crypt: The way that I would play it, it isn't there instead of Leyline of the Void (notice that there are 4 in the side). It's there as a powerful tool against combo, to prevent the crazy-go-nuts Yawgmoth's Will turn. If you plop down the crypt against storm or gush combo, they have to rethink their entire strategy, if they have one left.

And yes, I agree that Yawgmoth's Will is pretty horrible for this deck in the early game. And it's useless against decks where there is no late game.

[Liam-K]

LfL is the most implacable card in the format and attacks a weakness of a top tier shell.  It's almost a clock against Gush... their resource investment in stalling it's going to be so high, in most cases you can`t sustain your defense against it and progress your gameplan fast enough to win before you`ve got nothing left, so you`re forced to go balls out and race it.  If you know they can`t make it in a couple turns, it has a great chance to seal things up.  Not saying it deserves Yawgwill`s slot but it`s not the 60th card.

I like the `goyfs... I found builds with 4 `noughts and masks extremely vulnerable to sideboard artifact hate, especially ancient grudge.  It costs too many cards to get a dreadnought on the board for you to have much left to do once that`s done without an extremely strong hand, and aggro-disruption is not going to accelerate out of a stall like a broken deck.  Other cheap threats that force you to board against creatures rather than artifacts attacks this problem from several angles.

However, I question the worth of the Trinket->Dreadnought plan.  Trinket Mage slows down dreadnought by at least a turn, possibly several in the early game, which seems counterintuitive... the point of Dreadnought is he is so fast he`s worth the awkwardness, and Trinket makes him slower and clumsier.  I do see that he lets you cut masks and stifle effects for a toolbox, but I wonder if the logical eventuation of this line of thinking is not to cut Dreadnought altogether.

1 Island looks questionable to me.

Would singleton Chalice be able to fit?  You`re running tons of mana disruption, duress effects, clearly expecting to face merchant scroll, and have lots of things people will want to cast solutions to.  It seems like you`d pretty commonly read an opponent as really needing that 1-2cc spell, which chalice will let you shut down, and dropping it for 0 against someone you`ve mana screwed in the first couple turns isn`t always terrible.

[Wollblad]

Would singleton Chalice be able to fit?  You`re running tons of mana disruption, duress effects, clearly expecting to face merchant scroll, and have lots of things people will want to cast solutions to.  It seems like you`d pretty commonly read an opponent as really needing that 1-2cc spell, which chalice will let you shut down, and dropping it for 0 against someone you`ve mana screwed in the first couple turns isn`t always terrible.

I do not like that Chalice. The deck has way too many 1 and 2 CC spells. Even though you may stop that single spell you are talking about, it is a way too unpredictable game plan and you might end up locking yourself more than your opponent. I would much rather go for an Aether Spellbomb which amongst others deals with Dryads and Platinum Angel.

[OwenTheEnchanter]

You guys really did your homework and covered almost all the bases.

3 Trinket Mage 1 Phyrexian Dreadnaught: The origional list had 0 and 4 and they just made they deck really clunky, sure you more-often had turn 1 Naught draws but unless you drew a Brainstorm they clogged up your hand and you often had a Mask with nothing to go with it or multiple Naughts or a Force without a blue card. Trinket Mage allows the deck a way to find Senseri's Divining Top which not only is outstanding on its own but its a way to control Dark Confidant from killing you when your in a commanding position which can happen in a deck full of Thoughtseize, fetches, and Force of Will.

Yawgmoths Will: It would appear this is the most discussed card in the deck, but in my eyes its value is simple, against control decks when you board up to 6 Duress effects its going to be failry easy to resolve and it can recoup insane card advantage after all your 1-1s.

Life from the Loam: A singleton that can turn all your Brainstorms into Ancestrals and adds a dynamic to the deck that only stax can match, the Waste/Strip lock.

0 Echoing Truth: You put a catch-all like Echoing Truth into your deck if you need to stop something like Empty the Warrens or Darksteel/Platinum Angel. With just as many Trinkets as Demonic Tutor / Vampiric / Mystical and Engineered Explosives already in the deck you can cheat slots by sticking an Aether Spellbomb in the board. Explosives stops Warrens and Spellbomb handles Platz, its risky but there isn't much room in the maindeck so I tried to get clever with the #'s.

3 Threads of Disloyalty 0 Sower of Temptation: Threads is cheaper and this deck is already equipped to handle the Stax matchup. Anyone who chooses Sower is G R E E D Y ! ! !

3 Thoughtseize 1 Duress: Obviously Thoughtseize is the better card but as I said earlier the life total was one worry of mine going into this tournament so I opted for 1 Duress over the 4th Thoughtseize to slow the bleeding. For those who suggested 5-6 Duress effects I can only relpy with why? What would you cut? and for what reason? My 75 already has 6 Duress in it, 8 seems like overkill and its already bad in some matchups.

Let me know how you feel about what I suggested / ran!

- Owen

[Solomox]

Hey there Owen!  Thanks for the explanations you gave.  It's funny you brought these points out because I have been playtesting this deck almost non stop ever since the list was posted.  All of my earlier questions on the numbers of cards and the inclusion of certain cards in the main deck and the board have been stomped.  The more I played the deck, the more I found myself saying, "Oh... that's why!"  I had originally tried the 4 Dreadnought/0Trinket Mage, as well as a 2 nough/2 mage split.  Needless to say, I'm now back to the 3 Mage/1 Dreadnought split. 

I will back up what was said earlier in this thread about the deck having no glaring weaknesses.  The deck has tools for every matchup.  The only matchup I have found to be incredibly annoying is Landstill, but then again, it usually is.  I have tested the Oath matchup due to some people saying that it could be tough.  I found it to be roughly a 60/40 in favor of Deez Noughts.  (Actually more like a 62/38, but whatever)  Tarmogoyfs and Confidants can keep tempo and card advantage to your favor long enough to finish them off.  Of course, Oath can just explode early, but in vintage most decks can, so I don't really count lucksack opening hands.   

At this point I'm using the same list you all were.  I am, however using a 2 Duress/2 Thoughseize split.  It works great.  The lack of the 3rd Thoughtseize was never really noticeable to me.  To sum up, I have found that any card I had a question about was answered by testing.  The deck is highly interactive and has such amazing synergy that I can find nothing to change at the moment.

What matchups do you feel are the most difficult?

[AJFirst]

I played almost the same list day 1, starting 4-0 but quickly falling out of contention after that with a combination of multiple mulligans and weak technical play on my part. The deck is very strong, and I enjoyed playing it a lot. I played a 2-2 duress/thoughtseiz split, and a 2-2 sower/threads split. The Tormod's Crypt was stone dead all day and belongs in the board in my opinion, as I'd rather have a second Engineered Explosives or the AEther Spellbomb main. Loam was unreal all tournament (good to see you're using the brainstorms into ancestral argument Owen) and the Will was fantastic the one time I got to cast it. ICBM really dominated SCG Chicago weekend. Hats off.
-AJ

[apocalyp]

Is the trygon predator in the board for oath?    It seems rather slow am I missing something?

[OwenTheEnchanter]

Is the trygon predator in the board for oath?    It seems rather slow am I missing something?

A. Imagine a Juggernaught and a Trygon Predator meeting on the battlefield (THAT SHOULD BE REASON ENOUGH TO SIDEBOARD THIS CARD).

B. Look at how powerful Trygon Predator is in the mirror match, or at least against Sullivan Solution aka DeezNaughts (the origional). No real way for it to get removed and it dominates the board killing all Moxen, Dreadnaughts, Threads, and Masks in sight.

C. Oath is a terrible deck and underplayed for 100+ reasons.

D. Even if I did have the misfortune of getting paired against an Oath deck, I can Thoughtseize-Duress-Force of Will-Play Trygon before Oath gets down and then im GOLDEN- or even play Trygon and Time Walk / Stifle the Oath trigger. I can even Stifle the Orchard trigger and Wasteland the Orchard to buy time.

- Owen

[SonataOfTheCathedral]

Trygon Predator is one of the best cards to battle shop decks with for sure, not only do they have limited way's to remove him, he puts insane pressure on matches that are aggro faceoff's where you figure the plan the opposing aggro deck is tinkering with is more equipment.

One of the more complex matches I have played across with this deck is the Goblins match, it's extremely fascinating, because it ends up being such a huge landslide in one or the other decks favor. Certain draws just don't work for both of the decks. Some of the Goblin's draw's just plow through this deck, and vice versa.

The meta is going to face an interesting shift soon, you will see a higher concentration of strange aggro decks and more combo returning, and of course GAT. Where this deck is headed is going to be interesting, and how it evolves. There are so many interesting ways to fuse it with other themes, one that I has been interesting to me is Bomberman for sure.

-Elias

[The Duressed]

C. Oath is a terrible deck and underplayed for 100+ reasons.

D. Even if I did have the misfortune of getting paired against an Oath deck, I can Thoughtseize-Duress-Force of Will-Play Trygon before Oath gets down and then im GOLDEN- or even play Trygon and Time Walk / Stifle the Oath trigger. I can even Stifle the Orchard trigger and Wasteland the Orchard to buy time.

It's more of an issue that Oath is completely un-played in the United States... it basically sees play exclusively in Europe right now. Also, Stifling an Orchard trigger isn't something that I would count on; you play all kinds of creatures pretty much as fast as you can.

Also, why doesn't this deck use equipment for the aggro mirror?

[The Duressed]

I did some testing with this deck yesterday vs. GAT and Super Long. The focus of my testing was going to be how Stifle worked for the deck, how often you wanted to Stifle a fetch, and things of that nature.

My results: Stifle is much like Daze, in terms of tempo and control. Once they see the Stifle, they'll play around it for the rest of the game, but it's not that hard to do. You both can just sit there and play draw-go for as long as you please, but doing so against a combo deck seems really, really poor. However, slowing the opponent down for a turn or two by at least bluffing the Stifle is probably what this deck needed in order to slow the opponent down and get the threats of your 'Goyfs and Bobs and things onto the table (which, honestly, are rather slow. They're no colossus, and they're no tendrils for 20. Let's be honest, they're a 3 turn clock at best).

Why play Stifle, then? Because, at least in this deck, the idea is that it creates a creature that lots of decks can't deal with (which I strongly disagree with. No aggro deck worth its salt will be helpless against 1 guy, who's an artifact, no less. It's like a Darksteel Colossus, except it dies to "Destroy"). If it fits into your deck's game plan, it seems better than Daze. The only other thing would be that if you expect to see infinite storm or flash decks, Stifle seems like a good card to have around.

Why not play Stifle, then? Because it can be clunky and worthless in a deck that doesn't need it. Stifling a fetchland needs to be a significant portion of your game plan, and if you plan to be casting spells during your main phases of turns 1, 2, 3, and 4, Daze is almost certainly better.

That's what I came up with, anyway.