Pwn Your Opponent with Tentacles!--The ANT Primer

[Marske]

The only people who could acceptably walk into this thread and start posting charts and percentages would be Jon Finkel and Kai Budde.  For the rest of us, we must accept that we are merely mortal and humble ourselves.  We must acknowledge that we make mistakes.  Some of us will make less mistakes than others, but it doesn't matter if you think you're playing perfect because you are in all likelihood making a lot of mistakes. 

Steve admitting being unable to pilot Doomsday correctly, I won tourneys with it repeatedly.  'Nuff said.

I was merely joking about the fact that Steve LOVES those graphs as seen in his most recent SCG articles, nothing more.

Vault-Key in your opening hand with lotus and FoW backup *twice* in a tournament is luck.  Unless of course you're saying that you stack your deck...  The number of mulligans you take should be Poisson random (since no matter how much skill you have no mana/all mana has some fixed frequency).  And the list goes on.  Stating that luck is completely unrepresented in tournament magic is nonsensical.

tl;dr: You can formally prove that match win% carries more information than top8 frequency.  This isn't luck v. skill.

Huh ? Arguing with yourself here?

Ok, enough with the joking around, in my perception, "luck" has no place in a game based on Math (like Magic), It's not "lucky" that you have TV/Key  with lotus and Backup (twice) in a tournament. You put all those cards in your deck and you have a X% chance in X games to draw those cards in the exact order to facilitate this turn 1 Kill. That's not luck...

Luck \Luck\, n. [Akin to D. luk, geluk, G. gl["u]ck, Icel. lukka, Sw. lycka, Dan. lykke, and perh. to G. locken to entice
That which happens to a person; an event, good or ill, affecting one's interests or happiness, and which is deemed casual; a course or series of such events regarded as occurring by chance; chance; hap; fate; fortune; often, one's habitual or characteristic fortune; as, good, bad, ill, or hard luck. Luck is often used by itself to mean good luck; as, luck is better than skill; a stroke of luck

To be in luck, to receive some good, or to meet with some success, in an unexpected manner, or as the result of circumstances beyond one's control; to be fortunate.

Luck in Magic is either people's perception of a occurrence with a rather small chance or the meeting of some success.  Luck isn't a result of circumstances beyond one's control (unless you count opponents getting sick, getting hit by a car etc and thus dropping earning you a win as lucky) everything in Magic, from the shuffle to playing isn't luck it's percentages.

It's not a semantic debate.  Derek was challenged on having match win% data instead of top8s.  I stepped in to clarify that match win% is the more informative measure.  For some reason, people keep trying to rehash the luck/skill debate instead of accepting that information theory can cut through the problem.

I was referring to the Luck vs Skill debate.

Anyway, match win% isn't any more better then top 8's as with both we'd have to assume all players have an equal skill set going into the match. At least top 8's are usually populated by people with "above average" skill levels. I agree with you that Information Theory and basic plain math are better then talking about Luck vs Skill and can clearly cut through the problem.

[Rico Suave]

This isn't a rehash of the luck/skill debate.  Unless of course you want to argue that I'm the best player in the format, possibly tied with Vroman (who couldn't seem to lose with Iona Oath for a long stretch).

Match win % offers better evidence of deck quality than top8's because one is a stochastic approximation of the other.  This is fact and not up for debate.  The entropy (number of yes/no questions needed to determine its value) of match win% is >> the entropy of top8 placings since the number of available placings is starkly lower.  Entropy is well-studied in information theory.  Explaining entropy is painful, but a trivial knowledge of it quickly answers the question "Which carries more information content?  Match win% or top8 frequency?"


Since you brought up that asinine debate, there's a common "scheme" in actively managed mutual funds where a bank will create many funds nearly at random.  With a large number of funds, some will perform better than the market, some worse, and some much better even if just by random chance.  After a number of years, they take the best funds and market their performance as some sort of financial wellspring.   This is identical.  Given a large number of players, even given that all matches are a coin-toss, some players will appear to be coin-toss gods.   Is Kai Budde a better player than me?  Probably.  With type II decks, is his match win% against other pros > 60%?  Hell no.

Was this addressed at me?  Because it is cute and all, but doesn't really get to the point I was making.  And please, save us your gloating. 

I will try to keep the rest of this short.  Ironically, if you were to ask other pros what they thought of Kai Budde during his prime, they would have told you this:

"Kai doesn't lose on Sunday"

I don't want this to become a debate of luck vs. skill though.  Some people truly feel the only limiting factor for them is luck, and if you truly believe that then go right ahead.

I was making the point that this particular deck, even if it has a high match win percentage, also has a high match loss percentage.  There are a number of matches that go horribly, horribly wrong despite apparently perfect play.  If I were going to a tournament tomorrow and I wanted to win it, I am wondering why I would choose this particular deck.  It seems to be the "self-exploding" factor is a pretty strong one. 

I mean, if I were playing out for top 8 and I lost because I mulliganed to 5 both games, I would seriously question whether I should have been playing a deck that is naturally inclined to mulligan more often than other decks. 

[Doomsday]

Losing to bad flips is definitely discouraging.  I guess it's the price you pay for having probably the fastest consistent (non-Belcher) goldfish and being able to actually play disruption and protection too.

[Killane]

Losing to bad flips is definitely discouraging.  I guess it's the price you pay for having probably the fastest consistent (non-Belcher) goldfish and being able to actually play disruption and protection too.

Good thread. Just not sure why you would run this over TPS if you want a Tendrils kill? While faster, it seems much riskier and easier to disrupt, and TPS is plenty fast for the current meta.

[Suicideking]

So if this deck goes 4-2 in every tournament it enters we should play it because it has a winning match %, even though 4-2 doesnt make top8 most of the time.  Match wins in tournament play arent very solid either.  If you go 0-2 and then win 4 in a row against the loser bracket, big deal.  I can say personally, I almost never play vintage and have a losing record.  That doesn't mean the decks I play are always good. 

Second, I don't believe that anyone has tested this deck enough to know that t has positive match-ups versus certain decks.  The author doesn't provide who his testing partner was, how many matches they played, or when the testing was done.  Ive seen people testing vintage and win a 10-game set and think they have a good match.  Vintage gives the biggest testing swings of any format because of the brokenness of the cards. 

I would also like to know, what percentage of games does this deck lose to itself?

[Killane]

So if this deck goes 4-2 in every tournament it enters we should play it because it has a winning match %, even though 4-2 doesnt make top8 most of the time.  Match wins in tournament play arent very solid either.  If you go 0-2 and then win 4 in a row against the loser bracket, big deal.  I can say personally, I almost never play vintage and have a losing record.  That doesn't mean the decks I play are always good. 

Second, I don't believe that anyone has tested this deck enough to know that t has positive match-ups versus certain decks.  The author doesn't provide who his testing partner was, how many matches they played, or when the testing was done.  Ive seen people testing vintage and win a 10-game set and think they have a good match.  Vintage gives the biggest testing swings of any format because of the brokenness of the cards. 

I would also like to know, what percentage of games does this deck lose to itself?

QFT in every possible way. I, for example, have never done worse than 2-2 drop in any sanctioned tournament. But if I'm honest with myself, I'm a pretty bad standard and draft player and I never make top eight in those formats. My lifetime win percentage might be is greater than 50%, ut that doesn't mean anyone should ask me for advice on how to draft anytime soon. (Vintage, however, is a different story.)

% of self-loss games woudl be an interesting stat for this deck - anything on that?

[AmbivalentDuck]

So if this deck goes 4-2 in every tournament it enters we should play it because it has a winning match %, even though 4-2 doesnt make top8 most of the time.

Yes.    Assume it's a 100% payout tournament, entry fee is $25, payout is $64*25 (based on 6 rounds).  If you land in the top 8 20% of the time and the top 8 agrees to an 8-way split, your payout is 20% * 64 * 25 / 8 = $40.  In other words, you're expected (in the statistical sense) to make more than your entry fee.

Match wins in tournament play arent very solid either.  If you go 0-2 and then win 4 in a row against the loser bracket, big deal.

Agreed.  Match win % should come from "equal" pilots playing 20+ unsideboarded games and 20+ sideboarded games, then determining the match win % from that.  That's how Max and I test our Gobs build.  When I say we've tested hundreds of games against Tez, I mean it.

One of the nice things about Cockatrice is that users are uniquely identified and mbruker is willing to let me grab server game logs after-the-fact.  From those, we could actually have *solid* match win % for major archetypes going as far as correctly for play skill biases (trivial with Bayesian stats).  I'm just hoping he produces something awesome that catches on.

Second, I don't believe that anyone has tested this deck enough to know that t has positive match-ups versus certain decks.  The author doesn't provide who his testing partner was, how many matches they played, or when the testing was done.  Ive seen people testing vintage and win a 10-game set and think they have a good match.  Vintage gives the biggest testing swings of any format because of the brokenness of the cards.  

I would also like to know, what percentage of games does this deck lose to itself?

That said, a spreadsheet of his testing results by date and archetype would be nice.

[Marske]

@Killane,
Calculate the number of times one could see Demonic Consultation within X sample hands and within 2-4 draws (3 turns) then calculate how high the probability is of you removing all Tendrils when playing it with X cards left within the deck. Also calculate how high the risk of RFGing All cards is when Consultation for Y restricted card. Add to that the probability of flipping yourself to death within X flips at X life Calculate all this (which is A LOT) and you have the exact percentage this deck kills it's self when played "perfectly".

How is knowing how large of a percentage this deck has regarding kills itself useful ?

I've never ever cared for this as any well build ANT list has had a higher turn 1 Kill % (killing the opponent) then killing itself. Beyond the obvious mistakes of Pacting without being able to Pay for it. Statistically (and No I do not have the current numbers only older ones done for the list I used in my primer) this percentage hasn't been really high.

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

a spreadsheet of his testing results by date and archetype would be nice.

I didn't record dates.  Although I think people will be highly skeptical, I will post the results.

Double fisting:

Spell Pierce Tezz:
Out of 18 matches, ANT won 12 while Spell Pierce Tezz (with Bobs) won 6.  I don't think that the match-up is actually this good, so I listed it as slightly favorable, based on my experience in tournaments.  Also note that I think a Duress/Thoughtseize list would be more difficult for ANT than a Spell Pierce list.

5c Stax:
As I said earlier, out of 22 matches, ANT won 15 while 5c Stax won 7.  This match-up might also not be as much of a blow-out as the results suggest, but it still seemed to be in favour of ANT.

Unfortunately, I don't have the records for the less-tested match-ups, but I recall the results in general.  Once again, the classifications are meant as general guide-lines.  Given the variation between different builds, and massive variations between sideboards, I think that it is impossible to "accurately" classify even a single match-up in Vintage.  Any classification will necessarily be imperfect.  Nevertheless, I tried my best to represent the match-ups based on my experience with the deck.

I mean, if I were playing out for top 8 and I lost because I mulliganed to 5 both games, I would seriously question whether I should have been playing a deck that is naturally inclined to mulligan more often than other decks. 

The mulligans were due to coloured mana issues, but I don't think that this is because of a problem with the mana base.  My ANT list runs the same number of lands as TPS (12), and in addition to Jet and Sapphire I run 3x Chrome, which means I have more coloured mana sources than a combo deck traditionally thought to be "stable."  The 3x Chrome means I have the same number of coloured sources as a lot of Tezz lists (which run15 lands).  Pretty much every deck in Vintage (except Dredge) will occasionally double mulligan due to mana/colour screw.  I don't think ANT mulligans significantly more than other decks--in testing, other decks seemed to mulligan just as often.

I would also like to know, what percentage of games does this deck lose to itself?

I kept stats on this for a while and losses after resolving Ad Naus (at reasonable life) ended up being around 5%.  3BB to win the game 95% of the time is a good deal, I think.

I didn't keep stats on Consult because since it's restricted I don't cast it nearly as much.  But I only recall 1 time when I killed myself consulting for a 3 or 4-of, in all the time that I have been playing the deck.  I'm pretty sure that the chances of losing to Consult are even lower than the chance of dying to Ad Nauseam.

Good thread, though, now that the title has been changed. Just not sure why you would run this over TPS if you want a Tendrils kill? While faster, it seems much riskier and easier to disrupt, and TPS is plenty fast for the current meta.

I think that the faster goldfish makes the deck stronger against Dredge, Oath, and Tezz, although the lack of FOW hurts in the Stax matchup.  Could you clarify what you mean by "easier to disrupt"?  Are you referring to the lack of FOW?

[Godder]

The original thread title was a poor choice, in my opinion, but it was changed by the OP. Please keep the discussion to the topic of the thread, not to the title of the thread.

[zeus-online]

I was making the point that this particular deck, even if it has a high match win percentage, also has a high match loss percentage.

That really dosn't make sense in any way at all. How can it have both a high win and loss percentage? Did you mean "swingy" instead?

I must admit that i haven't seen ad nauseam fizzle all that much.

About dark confidant:
Marske points out that it's less flips from ad nauseam...but do you really care about how many flips you get from ad nauseam when you're getting them from confidant instead? What is the difference from getting your card from a 2/1 critter or a 5 mana instant? Aslong as you get the card it really shouldn't matter. Cabal therapy could be an option with 4 Confidants in the deck (instead of thoughtseize), although i don't really see the problem with thoughtseize...Sure 8 "real" duress would be better then a 4/4 split but honestly, i'd love to play 2 life to see that gaddock teeg, canonist or whatever hit the yard instead of the battlefield (God i hate that word "battlefield"...let's just call it "in play" instead )

Also about necropotence....Necro guaranties you 1 card for 1 mana which ad nauseam does not do, also necro costs  , and thus makes it the best card in any dark ritual based deck (In my experience)...Do you guys really feel like T1 has become too fast for Turn 1 necro, Turn 2 kill? And even if it does not kill, you should have enough disruption to make sure your opponent does not either. I know force is absent, but most threats will still be dealt with by bounce or duress effects. Necro is also a perfect setup card for Y. Will.

I agree on cutting tinker/jar though...Those cards seems horrible in the deck.

Also...Has anyone tried Sensei's top in Ad nauseam?

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

Also...Has anyone tried Sensei's top in Ad nauseam?

Although I imagine Top wouldn't be terrible, I didn't test it because there's nothing I would want to cut for it.  As it is right now, I would add the 4th Confidant and 4th Thoughtseize before adding Top.  The problem with Top is that it doesn't replace itself, and you have to invest 2 mana before it does anything.  That said, I could see Top being useful to draw cards from topdeck tutors in order to fetch and kill with Tendrils after resolving Ad Nauseam--sometimes it can be annoying when I have Vamp/Mystical but no Brainstorm/Ponder/Ancestral.

I agree on cutting tinker/jar though...Those cards seems horrible in the deck.

Do you think they are horrible because of the possible life loss from flipping them, or are there additional reasons?

If I were going to a tournament tomorrow and I wanted to win it, I am wondering why I would choose this particular deck.

Simply put, Ad Nauseam is the best unrestricted storm combo engine in Vintage.  Resolving this single spell will allow you to win the game the vast majority of the time.

[Rico Suave]

That really dosn't make sense in any way at all. How can it have both a high win and loss percentage? Did you mean "swingy" instead?

You could say swingy.  There are some things that just suck, like losing the die roll to Workshops and having the entire match hinge on that.

The other way to look at it is from a standpoint that the deck is linear and narrow, thus cards which are effective go a very long way against it.  

For example, if someone is playing against Tezz, a 4 card change will have an impact but it probably won't be a huge impact.  If you're losing hard to Tezz, changing 4 cards around won't suddenly give you a massive advantage.  It may bring it to even, but that's about all you can expect.  

This can be highlighted in a comparison to Ichorid.  An average deck that changes 4 random cards to 4 graveyard hate will dramatically boost the win percentage from almost nothing to perhaps a winning percentage.  The highly unfavorable match suddenly becomes highly favorable even with a small change, simply because the deck in question is linear and doesn't have much to fall back on.

In other words the deck doesn't really have an even match, it either has a pretty easy ride or struggles very hard.  While it's possible to claim that the deck has a high match win % against Tezz, this does not translate that the deck does well against all Tezz.  I would advise testing against Tezz with Duress and watching just how far that match win % plummets even though the other deck only changed 4 cards.

[zeus-online]

I agree on cutting tinker/jar though...Those cards seems horrible in the deck.

Do you think they are horrible because of the possible life loss from flipping them, or are there additional reasons?

Mostly just the life loss issue, in a deck like this you can't really include too many cards with high casting costs, 4 ad nauseams seems to be the only cards above 3 mana i'd be willing to play. Also, i don't think they're really needed.

[Killane]

Also about necropotence....Necro guaranties you 1 card for 1 mana which ad nauseam does not do, also necro costs  , and thus makes it the best card in any dark ritual based deck (In my experience)...Do you guys really feel like T1 has become too fast for Turn 1 necro, Turn 2 kill? And even if it does not kill, you should have enough disruption to make sure your opponent does not either. I know force is absent, but most threats will still be dealt with by bounce or duress effects. Necro is also a perfect setup card for Y. Will.

Ummmm, dude - you have to exile any cards you discard while Necro is in play. How does this help you set up YawgWin?

[Tempus]

Also about necropotence....Necro guaranties you 1 card for 1 mana which ad nauseam does not do, also necro costs  , and thus makes it the best card in any dark ritual based deck (In my experience)...Do you guys really feel like T1 has become too fast for Turn 1 necro, Turn 2 kill? And even if it does not kill, you should have enough disruption to make sure your opponent does not either. I know force is absent, but most threats will still be dealt with by bounce or duress effects. Necro is also a perfect setup card for Y. Will.

Ummmm, dude - you have to exile any cards you discard while Necro is in play. How does this help you set up YawgWin?

You draw a lot of cards and can keep acceleration with some disruption. Normally you will have the tools to win with y.win on the next turn after Necro resolved. That's the setup for will part. Sure you have to exile some cards you discard, but those are cards not helping at the moment..

[Killane]

Also about necropotence....Necro guaranties you 1 card for 1 mana which ad nauseam does not do, also necro costs  , and thus makes it the best card in any dark ritual based deck (In my experience)...Do you guys really feel like T1 has become too fast for Turn 1 necro, Turn 2 kill? And even if it does not kill, you should have enough disruption to make sure your opponent does not either. I know force is absent, but most threats will still be dealt with by bounce or duress effects. Necro is also a perfect setup card for Y. Will.

Ummmm, dude - you have to exile any cards you discard while Necro is in play. How does this help you set up YawgWin?

You draw a lot of cards and can keep acceleration with some disruption. Normally you will have the tools to win with y.win on the next turn after Necro resolved. That's the setup for will part. Sure you have to exile some cards you discard, but those are cards not helping at the moment..

Ok, but Necro is not really the "perfect" set-up card for will. That would be Bargain, since whatever you discard you can resuse.

[Doomsday]

But do you find yourseld passing the turn after a resolved Bargain?  The discard --> graveyard shouldn't be much of a benefit IMO.  Not that this is especially relevant because we aren't playing Bargain in ANT, but I really like Necro.

[zeus-online]

All you need to make will a bomb is mana acceleration and access to tendrils...Necro will do that, and help you protect it aswell.

Oh and bargain costs 6 mana while necro costs 3 mana, slight difference. Necro is much harder to use then bargain though, which is why some people loose after resolving it.

[unicoerner]

I think it`s funny that the first posters just punched OP for his statements. OP gave reasons for every choice he made and playtested his deck. He put a lot of effort into this article. Even if not everything was right, atleast he got a lot of you guys thinking about this deck again.

So thank you for posting this and putting lots of effort into this "thing"

Imo Lodestone Golems impact on the Metagame will be too big, atleast in the next months, that any Storm combo deck will show up with great succes.  As you stated 9 Sphere is hard for this deck and now pretty much every Stax deck will play 9 Sphere effects.
It`s right that LOdestone Golem is weaker vs you then the normal Spheres, but then he just needs to swing into you once to make your key spell soo much weaker.

By the way i like Bob in this deck, but i really would like to have sth better than Thoughtseize or Pact

[ErkBek]

I haven't been on TMD in a long time. I figured I'd check out what people thought of Worldquake cards and I stumbled across this thread. I was kinda surprised that I was name dropped in the article, nowadays the only time I read about myself is when I'm getting blamed for something at work.  

When I stopped playing T1 ~6 months ago, I thought ANT was very under represented in the metagame. The only real bad matchup my list had was BUG Fish. I credited this largely to the lack of highly competent pilots playing the deck (or maybe well know pilots). That's kind of how Storm always is though....

After good amount of testing, I eventually decided to cut Tinker-Jar. Tinker-Jar was in the deck for 2 reasons. (1) Increase threat density (2) provide alternate ways to win without using life as the primary resource. While (1) was still valid, early builds of ANT lacked threat density (mine didn't), (2) wasn't panning out. Often times decks that got some beats in were packing Null Rods and/or Stifles, so Tinker just wasn't so reliable. I tried out Sensei's Top instead of Tinker-Jar and was very impressed. Basically, if you've got a Sensei's Top going then you're probably casting Duress or a bomb every turn. I never really gave Dark Confidant much of a shot, because Top was so good. The only times I wanted Dark Confidant over Sensei's Top was against Null Rod decks (technically vs. Chalice @1's on the play they're better too, but I probably wasn't going to win regardless in those games). Cutting Tinker-Jar actually does a lot for going deeper with Ad Naus, since flipping tops instead of Tinker/Jar is a savings on average of 3 life.

For the record, I thought Necropotence was still very good in the deck, definitely worth playing. Just cause Ad Nauseum generally wins now, doesn't mean necro isn't worth playing. It's not like I don't play Brainstorm because Ancestral is better. It goes back to that whole, threat density thing. Necro isn't quite the "I win" card that it was in IT or PL, but you still win almost every time you get to untap. Necro'ing in here is a little different than normal because you're trying to assemble only Yawg Will kills or 2x Duress + Mini-Tendrils hands. AN obv sucks when you've got a Necro going, Twister isn't the safest play either because the blind 7 can be a bad when AN is dead, but the sheer drawing power of Necro can't be overlooked!

I don't want to bog up this thread with decklists, but here is what I was playing 6 months ago:

Land 12
4 Delta
2 Mire
3 Usea
2 Swamp
1 Island

Accel 16
4 Dark Rit
1 Cabal Rit
3 Chrome Mox
3 Mox
5 Lotus-Crypt-Petal-Sol Ring-Vault

Protection 12
4 Duress
4 Thoughtseize
1 Hurkyls
3 Chain of Vapor

Kill 2
2 Tendrils

Business 18
4 DT / VT / MT / Iseal
4 Ad Nauseam
1 Necro
1 Twister
1 Yawg Will
3 Ponder / BS / Ancestral
3 Sensei’s Top
1 Time Walk

SB
4 Extirpate (for hitting Cabal Therapy or Nacros)
1 Tormod's Crypt

2 Island
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Engineered Explosives

1 Tinker
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
3 Spell Snare

Vs. Drains probably no boarding would be done. Bounce Spells can be really useful against their Tinker plans or storming up.

Vs. Dredge we'd board out all the Duress for 5 hate cards, EE, and 2 Islands.

Vs. Shops -5 Duress, +5 good cards

Vs. Null Rod Fish +2 Island, +3 Snare, +2 Tinker/Dude, -1 Ad Nauseam, -1 Mana Crypt, -2 Sensei Top, -2 Duress, -1 Ponder


Thoughtseize was way better than Pact of Negation in my testing. PoN was only good vs. Drains. Thoughtseize was not only great vs. Drains, but it did something vs. other decks. With Sensei's Tops, it gave me the Duress or bomb every turn line of play too. Thoughtseize also prevents you from Pacting yourself to death vs. double counterspell.

I cut D Consult because it lost me an unacceptable amount of games that I was winning. You can do the numbers all day to determine if Tendrils is still in the deck after Consult,but sometimes RFGing a substantial portion of your library costs you too. Maybe it's just bad luck, but my losses due to consult have generally come in pairs.

Cutting Consult let me drop to 2 Tendrils and 1 Time Walk for the kill. Time Walk is almost always lethal off an AN, because it leads into Yawg Will kills with a topdeck tutor.

3 Sensei's Tops felt like 1 too many, but I couldn't figure out what to run in place of the 3rd.

I never got to test my Fish board, but Spell Pierce seems better than Snare.  


Lodestone Golem is stupid vs. ANT, since he hits your ability to combo in 2 ways. He's yet another reason to play Thoutghseize over PoN.

I've got to go. GL with the deck and nice article.

[zeus-online]

Erik covered all of my points much better then i was able to do. And i agree on just about everything he said.

[Purple Hat]

is thoughtsieze better than spell pierce in this deck?  I haven't tested that, but It seems to me like it might not be.

Eric,
in reading your deck list that's 1 each of lotus, petal, crypt, vault, sol Ring?  Was just confused because ponder/ancestral/brainstorm is listed as 3, not 1 each

[AmbivalentDuck]

is thoughtsieze better than spell pierce in this deck?  I haven't tested that, but It seems to me like it might not be.

Thoughtseize hits Gaddock Teeg and Lodestone Golem.  Thoughtseize comes down off more readily available black mana (since black has rituals).  Thoughtseize is proactive: you don't have to leave up IN CASE your opponent does something. And finally, Thoughtseize provides you with information (about whether or not you can safely go off, etc).

[ErkBek]

is thoughtsieze better than spell pierce in this deck?  I haven't tested that, but It seems to me like it might not be.

Eric,
in reading your deck list that's 1 each of lotus, petal, crypt, vault, sol Ring?  Was just confused because ponder/ancestral/brainstorm is listed as 3, not 1 each

I totally agree with Duck on Pierce vs. Seize.

Sorry about any confusion with the decklist. Fixed.

[swawagon]

Night's Whisper was a card I always liked in Ad Nauseam. Perhaps as a replacement from Erik's lists 3rd Top? It's pretty great with Yawgmoth's Will.

Now this is probably a horrible idea, but in a deck so good at damaging itself, Death's Shadow seems a natural fit. However obviously when the deck has Ad Nauseam and/or Necropotence working, you are most likely already winning - thus this seems like another classic win-more card that does not offer much towards the Tendril's of Agony win.

[mistervader]

Is there any reason why Vault-Key is a bad thing in this deck?

I ask this because I've been testing out a version that ran V-K (I don't own a Time Walk and I cut one Thoughtseize for both cards.), and made some minor changes to my decklist as well, and then I replaced one fetchland with a Creeping Tar Pit (The UB manland.) as an additional kill condition.

Now, as for why I did this, I encounter a lot of Shop Aggro in my meta, and while they may have Wires and clocks, I don't encounter a single Smokestack anymore. Vault-Key allows me to punch through a wall of sphere effects, and win through it. At the same time, it's a cheap out against other decks when the main gameplan appears to be problematic. Of course, my main consideration is its application against Stax, but the "oops, I win" factor is also undeniable.

So anyways, I'm sure I'm not the first guy to try out Vault-Key in this deck. Is there any fatal reason why this is not being played more in Ad Nauseam?

[AmbivalentDuck]

So anyways, I'm sure I'm not the first guy to try out Vault-Key in this deck. Is there any fatal reason why this is not being played more in Ad Nauseam?

You're running two cards which are each dead on their own.  You can find both while comboing out, but you'd rather just kill with Tendrils.  You can have one in your opener and Tinker for the other...but why not just get Memory Jar and win with a card that isn't dead?

You also increase your susceptibility to Null Rod with little gain.

[mistervader]

So anyways, I'm sure I'm not the first guy to try out Vault-Key in this deck. Is there any fatal reason why this is not being played more in Ad Nauseam?

You're running two cards which are each dead on their own.  You can find both while comboing out, but you'd rather just kill with Tendrils.  You can have one in your opener and Tinker for the other...but why not just get Memory Jar and win with a card that isn't dead?

You also increase your susceptibility to Null Rod with little gain.

I forgot to qualify that I'm currently not running the Tinker-Jar plan and just running the Tops in Erik's new list. It has nice synergy with the Voltaic Key, but the Vault itself is understandably dead on its own.

In any case, it's been my most reliable game 1 tool against Spheres (my meta can have up to 5 of these guys running around, and in a sample size of 20-30 players, that's a huge deal.). I managed to stare down two Spheres and just assemble V-K and win from there in several tests.

Of course, I have yet to test against Noble Fish and the like, but my biggest concern was the Shop Aggro issue at the time.

[myw002]

With these new goodies that Shop decks have with the release of World Wake, do you guys feel your sideboard has changed at all?