Greetings Vintage community,
When we were in the Gush/Flash era (not too long ago) NLD and TTS were at the fore front of Storm decks (thank-you Mr. Becker). At that point I was a huge advocate of Doomsday as a singleton. Dooms Day is - as someone put it- an elagant win condition, that although tricky, seals the deal. Although I am still learning the ins and outs of TPS, one thing that I have come to realize is: TPS waits for the clear win, then crushes dreams. To me, this would equal Dooms Day.
To quickly get it out there, I would be inclined to replace Mind's Desire with Doomsday. As a budget player, I do not own Grim Tutors, nor Mind's Desireand thusly the lines of play that I have in my list are vastly different (I would assume) than the current "optimal" lists of TPS. My draw package includes x3 Night's Whisper over sheer tutor power that current lists run. With the increase of draw, I think that Dday becomes more of an option to the budget player. Not only that, but replacing Grim costs with Whisper costs, and replacing Minds's casting cost to Dday, could also reduce the on board mana requirements. There is a very real shift in the lines of play regarding which lands are fetched for; for instance, with Minds Desire you need to have
up, in a deck that is more
based. As Mr. Menendian lamented in a TPS related article, he wished he had Desire in the main Day one, yet I query if this would have been the case had he been running Dday. It's a much more involved question to ask as our lists would be vastly different, but a question to ponder none the less.
Part of what made Dday so successfull in NLD and TTS, was that there was an ability to run a light mana base and Brainstorm, Ponder and Gush - while all 4 ofs - were extreamly cheap and enabled turn 1-2 kills reliably. In the current meta, with the loss of brainstorm, Ponder and Gush; one still has the time to employ Dday as a very real and solid bomb to end the game now. In the current meta, it is still a card that one would tutor for when the requirements are met (brainstorm, Ponder or x3 Nights Whisper in hand). However, unlike Mind's Desire, the cards sculpts the win on the spot, vs. flipping a stormed amount of cards into a hopefull situation. Do not misunderstand me, I am not diminishing Mind's Desirer's capabilities or benifits. I am simply puting the question out there.
The disadvantages to running Dday are that it requires an increase in stand alone draw cards and that it reduces the number of
cards in the TPS list. The benifits that i can see, are that it is easily casted off a Dark Ritual and, with a shift of Grims to raw draw, fits neatly into a more
based package and is a win now bomb.
A sample Night's Whisper Dooms Day win may play out like:
4 mana sources in play and available to you
ritual, dday (nights in hand)
l
Top
lotus
ancestral
ritual
yawgs
Tendrils
Bottom
play nights (draw lotus acestral)
lotus (cracked for BBB)
tap for U - Ancestral - draw rest of deck
ritual (BBBBB)
yawgs
lotus (don't even have to crack)
Ritual (BBBBBBB)
Tendrils - 20 damage (BBB floating)
Of course this is achived on turn 3, w/ 3 lands and an accelerant. However can happen sooner depending on the cards drawn in the opening hand (like any other route to victory). My point is, that with a reliance on
accelerants in the deck, there is an increaced chance of things falling inline (mana wise) with D.Day than with Desire in the early game. That is a lamens theoretical point of view. In the end, this is a thread for discussion on the matter.
Other possible lines of discussion are:
Does this inclusion speed the deck up to any significant level?
Are there structural benifits to this idea vs. the current builds?
Is this a very plausible build for the budget player?
Does the inclusion of D.Day - as a singleton in TPS- create narrow lines of play?
Beyond pitching to Force of Will what Does Minds Desire bring to the table that D.day cannot match?
The point of all this is that I have had good initial - although not concrete and out of tournaments- results with D.day; and I would like to see what the community thinks of this matter. also if TPS could benifit, or at least create two strands of build, to give variety and unpredictability to the archtype.
Please discuss
Haunted.
