[Free Article] Mastering The Perfect Storm: High-Level Tips for Winning With

[OwenTheEnchanter]

DSC and Colossus are close enough that the biggest reason I'm running Leviathan is that it's blue and can pitch to Misdirection and Force of Will. 

That is the only arguement in this thread that makes any sense at all.

[AmbivalentDuck]

As long as Stax runs 4 Welder main, Inky will continue to enjoy significantly less disruption.

I think it's safe to assume that brown decks running 4 Welders will always be a relevant part of the meta unless they restrict Shops.

[Suicideking]

As long as Stax runs 4 Welder main, Inky will continue to enjoy significantly less disruption.

I think it's safe to assume that brown decks running 4 Welders will always be a relevant part of the meta unless they restrict Shops.

This argument is so bad.  First of all most blue decks are winning of vault/key, and the robot is irrelevant.  Second, DSC was the man in vintage for a long time, including the meandeck gifts days which had slaver playing welder as well as stax.   

[vassago]

I am going to have to say that I also think Inkwell is a better choice. I say this for two different reasons. 1 We see alot of fish builds in our local metas, due to proxies and cost of the deck or because null rod just really is that good sometimes.  This means STP or PTE are in these lists, and probably 4 ofs. What better way to make you opponents hand full of dead cards. This means you can pretty much see that these decks are going to have auto take outs for their side board, and if you know the deck well you can prepare to see what they are going to board in, but thats obvious right?  I am curious to see if any one will put DSC in the board to make the switch for game two or three after they remove the spot removal. Sounds bad, but might be kind of cool.  2 It doesnt seem all that much slower in the control match up, where there will be more turns taken, as that tends to be the way those match ups go.  At this point, the trade off for the extra turn for the shroud and island walk become immenslely relevant!  I definately think that Hurkyl's recall should be seeing some play in the near future, especially with all those shop decks performing so well lately.

Great article! This has caused me to sign up for premium  on SCG so I can read the future ones. Also, why are you banned from the forums?

[Mr. Type 4]

The "pitchability" of Inkwell should not be underestimated - it increases the utility of the card considerably.  I certainly pitched it lots of times.  in other decks, there are other considerations.  For instance, in Tez, it is important that you can pitch DSC to TFK and have it shuffle back in so you can Tinker it up, so the decision is less clear there. 

[Suicideking]

There is clearly no better one here.  Its totally dependent on the metagame, and the particular deck running it.  For a gro list you have other win conditions, so pitchability is much better then in tez where you can pitch to thirst and you are only running 2 win conditions.

Additionally, Inkwell is worse against ichorid which is seeing a burst or popularity.

[Xyre]

Other unmentioned upsides of Inky:

1) It's (marginally) easier to cast, especially off a Drain.

2) Islandwalk means it can break robot standoffs, and unless your opponent goes for the Tinker immediately after you get Inky, they can't win the race with DSC, where they could get a stalemate off DSCs bouncing.

[Suicideking]

Other unmentioned upsides of Inky:

2) Islandwalk means it can break robot standoffs, and unless your opponent goes for the Tinker immediately after you get Inky, they can't win the race with DSC, where they could get a stalemate off DSCs bouncing.

I think this has been mentioned a ton.

[Benfa]

One important thing about inkwell is that it is blue...

The most important thing about inkwell is that it is a blue dead card in your hand, that means that most of the time it's not a dead card anymore(usually you draw a force of will during a game)

You can pitch every blue card to fow, but usually in tps blue cards are key cards and you are not happy to pitch any of them, but that's not the case. Inkwell it's not simply having one more blue spell in the deck... it's not like: without inkwell i had 16 blue cards so the % of having it in my opening hand was x and now that i've 17 blue cards i've x+1/16x... In my opinion the question is: Do you prefear to pitch ancestral or time walk? and now, Do you prefear to pitch ancestral, time walk or inkwell? Moreover: Opponent: land ritual necro and you hold in your hand force of will, ancestral and darksteel colossus and other non blue cards = bye bye ancestral; now change darksteel with inkwell = you still have ancestral in hand. Sometime your inkwell become an ancestral , so pay attention trading them , that's vintage...

[Troy_Costisick]

One important thing about inkwell is that is blue...

The most important thing about inkwell is that is a blue dead card in your hand, that's mean that most of the time it's not a dead card anymore(usually you draw a force of will during a game)

The pitching thing is a wash.  You can pitch DSC to TFK.  Inky was great in Steven's deck- in fact obvsiously superior to DSC- because if you notice, he wasn't playing TFK.  In a deck with TFK, DSC is way better IMHO.  Forgive me for saying this, but if having DSC in your hand and needing to pitch it to FoW is a consistent problem for you, there's either something wrong with your build or something wrong with your play.

Peace,

-Troy

[AmbivalentDuck]

As long as Stax runs 4 Welder main, Inky will continue to enjoy significantly less disruption.

I think it's safe to assume that brown decks running 4 Welders will always be a relevant part of the meta unless they restrict Shops.

This argument is so bad.  First of all most blue decks are winning of vault/key, and the robot is irrelevant.  Second, DSC was the man in vintage for a long time, including the meandeck gifts days which had slaver playing welder as well as stax.   

And therefore?  Yes, DSC worked very well.  That speaks not at all to the question of which one sees more disruption in the current meta.  Owen made an empty statement along the lines of "every good deck runs Hurkyl's Recall and you'll beat the bad decks anyways."  The counterpoint is that Welder is an entire class of decks' answer to robots (and also to Time Vault).  Welder is neither a bad card, nor absent from good decks in the meta...defeating Owen's objection.

To your point, DSC was good.  And you'd *never* Tinker it out with an active Welder on the other side of the board.  You opted for the storm kill instead.  Nowadays, Tinker->Time Vault is the alternate kill and unlike Gifts's storm kill it's vulnerable to Welder.  It makes sense to have at least one of your kills immune to an active Welder.

[liberalbias]

I asked this question on the StarCity forums, but it sounds like you can't respond there. I'm curious to know how you go about beating the Mystic Remora/Meditate version of the mana drain strategy? It has become very popular in my local metagame (LSV, Web and Fob all run it regularly), and I can't figure out a way to beat it with TPS. Once they have Remora down, there just isn't a lot you can do, since they draw cards off every spell you play (and a lot of those cards are going to be pitch counters). I think that a Grim Long style deck might actually be a lot better, since you can go off more quickly (hopefully before they have a chance to lock you out with Remora). Fast draws are the only way I've managed to beat Remora decks. Do you think that siding in creatures is the way to go?

[Phele]

Creatures are very good against Remora decks, so maybe four Dark Confidants out of the sideboard could be a good answer.

[mdenny]

I have been a strong believer in TPS for quite some time, especially after reading your primer and after playing extensively with your list. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try Intuition over either Imperial Seal or Grim Tutor or possibly both. So far I have personally liked Intuition over Grim tutor in the games I have played it. My thoughts are that it has several upsides: That it is blue and pitches to Force, that it can help you get threshold for Cabal ritual, it is synergistic with Yawgmoth's Will (before you cast it) for example going for three dark rituals, and it is an instant with only one colored mana requirement. These seem to me to outweigh the downsides (namely that you can't just tutor for a particular one-of that you need to win), and that it cannot be cast off a dark ritual, in most situations. I am unsure if this is the correct analysis and so I am wondering if you had ever tried the deck with intuition, or if you could perhaps add a bit of input on the subject.

[jamestosetti]

After testing with inkwell I am once again convinced tps is the best deck in the format providing you play a million games with it. It may not be the best archetype or whatever but I'm convinced it's the best deck.

[jamestosetti]

I'm with you mdenny on that intuiton is very good in this deck. I used it to keep myself in the game against very good drain players where I normally would have lost.I think grim tutor is necessary in this deck because it wins so many games off a dark ritual. I think imperial seal is necessary to because you can topdeck into your tinker very fast or the needed card to go off. I think intuition is a metagame fixer myself. I've used thoughtseize and impulse also but they only work for so long. It comes back to the same list every time. I would like to hear what smemmen has to say on that as well as his thoughts on engineered explosives in the s/b.

[Smmenen]

I'm with you mdenny on that intuiton is very good in this deck. I used it to keep myself in the game against very good drain players where I normally would have lost.I think grim tutor is necessary in this deck because it wins so many games off a dark ritual. I think imperial seal is necessary to because you can topdeck into your tinker very fast or the needed card to go off. I think intuition is a metagame fixer myself. I've used thoughtseize and impulse also but they only work for so long. It comes back to the same list every time. I would like to hear what smemmen has to say on that as well as his thoughts on engineered explosives in the s/b.

The problem with EE is that it can't be played to kill Gaddock Teeg, among other problems.   It's not a bad idea, but I just don't think its better than a Chain of Vapor and a Massacre for Fish. 

Imperial Seal is not a card that I believe is cuttable from TPS, but the card that I do think should probably be removed in this new metagame is the Misdirection.  Intuition is an excellent card for that spot, but the card that I am probably going to be testing in that spot is Sensei's Divining Top.    The metagame is, oddly, shifting from turn 4-5 Mana Drain decks to a more diverse offering.   I think TPS would benefit by cutting Misd for either Intuition or Top.   I made fun of Team Reflection for running Top in TPS, and Intuition may very well be superior, but Top seems better in this metagame than it did before. 

[hitman]

Smmenen - What do you think about Impulse?  I've been doing a lot of testing with TPS and I keep finding that the deck has high variance.  Often times you have a hand full of bombs without the mana to cast them or you have a hand full of mana without bombs to use them on.  To smooth out the flow of the deck, I've cut Fact or Fiction and Misdirection for two Impulses and they've worked well.  I've found that, with Fact or Fiction, the tempo loss was too great to be able to effectively abuse the card.  I already have to be a winning posture for Fact to be effective.  The reason being that it costs four.  If I play it end of turn, I probably didn't do anything on my main phase to play it end of turn.  If I play it main phase, I usually don't have the mana to incorporate the cards I just got off the Fact. 

I've found that it's usually used as bait for countermagic so I can play a more devastating card next turn.  When my hand is light on mana, I can't even do that.  With Impulse, I can just dig into a Duress or Force of Will or another bomb for them to counter.  It smooths the flow of the deck in that way.  When I have explosive mana, I can use it effectively with a topdeck tutor, I can quasi-tutor with it for missing elements (like Dark Rituals, Force of Wills, Duresses or even to dig for bombs) and it's blue to pitch to Force of Will when my hand is well-balanced.

Sensei's Diving Top doesn't pitch to Force of Will and is shut off by Null Rod.  Other than that, it's better than Impulse.  I don't know if the trade-off makes Top better than Impulse, especially when your argument revolves around the diversification of the format.  With more than three to four decks seeing play regularly, is it more or less likely to run into Null Rod-packing decks like Workshops and Fish? 

Edit: Another potential problem for TPS is Chalice at one.  Impulse is excellent at skirting this problem and working around it.  I'm a big believer in combo decks ignoring disruption and finding efficient ways of working around them instead of fighting through them. 

[jamestosetti]

yea I just read gaddok teeg and he says no x spells. You were all probably looking at me like whats he smokin lol. Ok so I think our s/b's are the same again. It seems hard to cut misdirection because it is basically a counterspell and it can steal recall and redirect a huyky'ls recall. I like intuition because our games are usually shorter than they are long and you can put the opp to a decision real fast with that card. Whether it's intuition for 3 fow's or a duress and 2 cards for yawg will. Also you can say necropotence demonic tutor and tinker, thats really random guess right there but that will cause the game to shift in your favor real fast. I'd really love to run 61 cards but I think that's really 1 card to many. I'm going test running 3 duress because we're able to pitch inkwell now and intuition can put you back on top. I guess I'll test cutting time walk since leviathan slows our clock in the first place and us timewalking to draw a card seems redundant? I'll post back. Sorry about the crappy tips on engineered explosives.

[jamestosetti]

I was wondering what decks you think sensei's diving top are good against? I'm about to test 1 but I'm not sure if it goes in the main I was thinking in the s/b. I've seen it win quite a few times but only in the mirror match.

[mdenny]

I'm wondering if you could elaborate on the advantages of Top over Intuition. Would this signal TPS moving into a slightly slower role by trading tutor power for the consistency of Top? From reading your latest article you talk about TPS being a "critical mass" combo deck but i am wondering about its role in an environment that, atleast for me, is becoming more dominated by Fish.

[johnny2tone]

Just thought I'd throw in a few cents into the discussion as I've been playing TPS for quite a while, through a few variations. 
Firstly, I do like the Leviathan idea but still prefer DSC for everyday use.  The metagame where I play is not very fish centric, I prefer to run him in the board in replace of a massacre (I see looking back at your article you've cut one as well)... which only kills a few little white men anyway...
Secondly, I've never been a fan of Imperial Seal (it's also my eleventh proxy) and I've replaced it long ago with an impulse to very positive results (EOT is so important when all the good players play blue).  (haven't tested intuition, but I'd almost think that thirst is better if I'm willing to pay three for something)

I've got a question as well... do you really find all that sideboard hate for dredge necessary?? I run 2 of each jailer, crypt and needle and only ever lost game ones to dredge.  I find that a little extra discard in the board is necessary since I play against quite a few landstill decks in my area, amongst all the other control decks...

[Diakonov]

Sideboards are always an open call depending on your metagame, however, Ichorid is a worrisome match going by the "combo is beat by faster combo" mentality.  It's true that TPS is sometimes faster, but I think the averages would put Ichorid a little bit ahead.  There is another recent thread about Ichorid on here where some Ichorid players divulge some very useful sideboarding strategies against their deck. 

EDIT: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37632.30

Impulse is not a bad choice, I think, but Top has a few advantages over it.  I personally have been using Top in TPS for a while, and I love it.  For the same numerical cost as Impulse (2 mana, playing it then using it) you get to choose from the top 3 cards of your deck instead of 4.  But then, you can do it again for as many fetches/tutors as you have!  Also, it makes topdeck tutors that much better, because you get the card immediately.  If you do switch to Top, I strongly advise putting Imperial Seal back in.

There are situations where you will kick yourself like when you don't have any shuffle effects, or more obvious, if Null Rod hits, but this isn't something that happens in enough games to make me want to drop it for Impulse.

[Smmenen]

Impulse is fine as well.  Intution, Top, and Impulse are each cards that are I will be testing in the Misd spot. 

[tater]

Note that one more situation where Leviathan shines is against Darksteel Colossus.  If you get a swing in with Leviathan, then they Tinker for Colossus, you can unblockably hit two more times and race.  A Colossus in that situation would create a stalemate.  LSV actually won a game because of this situation as you can read in his most recent report.  This has also happened to me at least one or two times in testing.

this happened to me as well last night, i won with the leviathan because his tinker was 1 turn late and since i was running the leviathan there was no standoff, he just lost

on a side note, because of leviathan i have started running hurkyl's recall in place of echoing truth since i see many mirror matches in my meta

[policehq]

Note that one more situation where Leviathan shines is against Darksteel Colossus.  If you get a swing in with Leviathan, then they Tinker for Colossus, you can unblockably hit two more times and race.  A Colossus in that situation would create a stalemate.  LSV actually won a game because of this situation as you can read in his most recent report.  This has also happened to me at least one or two times in testing.

this happened to me as well last night, i won with the leviathan because his tinker was 1 turn late and since i was running the leviathan there was no standoff, he just lost

on a side note, because of leviathan i have started running hurkyl's recall in place of echoing truth since i see many mirror matches in my meta

That's just a situation where a Tinker shines against a Tinker played a turn or more later. If the Colossus player got a swing in before you played Tinker for Leviathan, you'd be screwed.

[FlyFlySideOfFry]

Note that one more situation where Leviathan shines is against Darksteel Colossus.  If you get a swing in with Leviathan, then they Tinker for Colossus, you can unblockably hit two more times and race.  A Colossus in that situation would create a stalemate.  LSV actually won a game because of this situation as you can read in his most recent report.  This has also happened to me at least one or two times in testing.

this happened to me as well last night, i won with the leviathan because his tinker was 1 turn late and since i was running the leviathan there was no standoff, he just lost

on a side note, because of leviathan i have started running hurkyl's recall in place of echoing truth since i see many mirror matches in my meta

That's just a situation where a Tinker shines against a Tinker played a turn or more later. If the Colossus player got a swing in before you played Tinker for Leviathan, you'd be screwed.

Not to mention if you Tinker on the same turn Colossus wins.

[tater]

That's just a situation where a Tinker shines against a Tinker played a turn or more later. If the Colossus player got a swing in before you played Tinker for Leviathan, you'd be screwed.

Not to mention if you Tinker on the same turn Colossus wins.

the point was there was no standoff, not the timing of the tinker

[FlyFlySideOfFry]

That's just a situation where a Tinker shines against a Tinker played a turn or more later. If the Colossus player got a swing in before you played Tinker for Leviathan, you'd be screwed.

Not to mention if you Tinker on the same turn Colossus wins.

the point was there was no standoff, not the timing of the tinker

I would rather have a standoff than lose 2/3 of the time in Tinker wars so I wouldn't count it as an advantage...

[jamestosetti]

I don't know how anyone can play darksteel in tps anymore with inkwell. After you try it out for a while you'll probably see that you'll pitch inkwell to counter his tinker then tinker your jar in and bust out spells all over the place.