Pwn Your Opponent with Tentacles!--The ANT Primer

[mistervader]

So I took the deck to a tourney, and I had a 3-2 outing. I lost the first match because I came from a gig and got to the tourney late, then I lost to my own Ad Naus when I didn't see a single mana source while flipping cards. The opponent I had was a control deck who ran Spellstutter Sprite, Skullclamp, etc.

Now, the bad news is I didn't run into Stax during the tourney, so I had no way of knowing if my plan B against Stax, i.e., assembling Vault-Key, was a good idea. I tested in MWS, but you know how it's different when you're playing in real time.

However, what I discovered was Voltaic Key was a godsend in this deck. It has synergy with so many things! It's perfect with untapping Mana Vault, with gaining card advantage on Sensei's Divning Top (I ran 2 in the maindeck. Erik was right: the Top is awesome.), and it helped me fire off Ad Naus off a Sol Ring and 2 Swamps much sooner. At the rate things are going, I do feel like it would be a good idea to cut a Time Vault, but I personally am all for keeping the Voltaic Key.

Thing is, the naysayers are right that Time Vault is a dead card in this deck. It does nothing on its own and has synergy only with your Voltaic Key. On the other hand, Voltaic Key was such a great fit in the deck, I was contemplating if I should run 2 of it main, since it allows me to fire off Ad Nauseam a turn earlier without blowing a Ritual, and it just makes my Top go crazy, and barring Null Rod, it thoroughly eliminates any need I'd ever have for Dark Confidant in the main or in the board.

I've swept the matches I won: one Oath of Druids deck, one Dredge deck, and one White Weenie deck (!). Ultimately, I think Time Vault may at best be only board material or if you actually ran Dark Confidant, but Voltaic Key is a card I didn't regret seeing at all.

So far, with my boarding plans, my only real mismatch at the moment (that I have zip boarding plans against.) are Dark Times decks that run maindecked SadSac. There was next to no way for me to recover from a SadSac unless I was holding one of my Tendrils, or my Creeping Tar Pit. I like Erik's boarding plan because the bot he Tinkers in is just wonderful against offsetting the life you lose from fetch, Thoughtseize, and so forth.

Here's a question for Mr. Becker, though: would you still run Spell Pierce for that board, or would you rather have Dispel in its place? I'm assuming the only thing you really wanted to counter with Pierce were Instants, in the first place, and Dispel seems a better fit for that than Pierce, as it's relevant at any point in the game, not just early on.

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

However, what I discovered was Voltaic Key was a godsend in this deck. It has synergy with so many things! It's perfect with untapping Mana Vault, with gaining card advantage on Sensei's Divning Top (I ran 2 in the maindeck. Erik was right: the Top is awesome.), and it helped me fire off Ad Naus off a Sol Ring and 2 Swamps much sooner. At the rate things are going, I do feel like it would be a good idea to cut a Time Vault, but I personally am all for keeping the Voltaic Key.

Thing is, the naysayers are right that Time Vault is a dead card in this deck. It does nothing on its own and has synergy only with your Voltaic Key. On the other hand, Voltaic Key was such a great fit in the deck, I was contemplating if I should run 2 of it main, since it allows me to fire off Ad Nauseam a turn earlier without blowing a Ritual, and it just makes my Top go crazy, and barring Null Rod, it thoroughly eliminates any need I'd ever have for Dark Confidant in the main or in the board.

The problem with Voltaic Key is that it doesn't do anything on its own.  As you said, you need either Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, or Top in play for it to be useful--otherwise it just sits there looking stupid.  There are many cards I would sooner run than it--for example, an extra Chrome Mox or Cabal Ritual, Dark Confidant, or an extra piece of disruption; all of these cards are useful in combination with more than just 5 other cards in your deck.

Furthermore, even in combination with these cards, Top is not that spectacular.  With Ring or Crypt it is a 1 mana artifact that taps to gain you +1 colourless (an off-colour mox is better).  With Top it costs you 2 mana/turn to draw 1 extra card (Confidant is way better).  The only card it's really good with (besides Time Vault) is Mana Vault, in which case it basically becomes a Sol Ring.

I'm assuming the only thing you really wanted to counter with Pierce were Instants, in the first place, and Dispel seems a better fit for that than Pierce, as it's relevant at any point in the game, not just early on.

Pierce also counters non-creature permanent-based disruption, such as Null Rod or other artifact lock-pieces, as well as discard-based disruption such as Duress and Thoughtseize.  You are not worried as much about instants (counterspells) because you can Duress them.

Against Sad Sac you can try boarding a 4th Tendrils.  The Tinker plan may not be reliable because Dark Times usually runs Edict.  Spell Pierce would probably be good against them, too.

[mistervader]

Yeah, I get what you mean about the Key sitting there, useless, but with two SDT, Time Vault, Mana  Crypt, Sol Ring, Mana Vault, I hardly found any reason to not like the Key, and it's a must-counter for most decks who assume you're Tezz when you open with it.

Anyways, here's my biggest beef with Dark Confidant, and I don't know if you've experienced this yet...

In three of my four matches, I had openings that involved one Sensei's Divning Top, and one land alone. Outside of that and a topdeck tutor like Mystical or Imperial Seal, I had no genuine business to speak of, and I'm pretty sure that if I had a Confidant in place of the Top, I'd have mulled a hand like that away. As it stands, the games I played out because I had SDT in my opening hand were games I won. I'm really reconsidering the role of Top in Erik's list as opposed to Bob in yours, but I'm still not completely sold on it. I'd probably want to, for example, run 3 Confidants and still keep at least one Top, for obvious reasons. The Top is just really good in the deck, whether for picking up your topdeck Tutor's fruits, or for ensuring you rip a threat from your topdeck almost every turn.

Of course, if I ran Confidant, then I'd also force myself back up to 3 Tendrils, since the necessity of coughing up a Tendrils while getting pinged by my own Bob is bound to be higher than if I didn't run Confidant. I'm not too broken up over putting Tendrils back in, but I have never missed the Demonic Consultation at all. I have never had a situation come up where Consultation would've won me the game a different line of play couldn't have done, and I take enough risks with Ad Nauseam on its own as is.

The only other changes I'm making in the maindeck is that I'm replacing one of the three Chains of Vapor I'm running with a Repeal for the cantrip goodness that just goes so well with the topdeck tutors. I still run a total of 4 bounce cards.

BTW, in testing, I have found out that there is very bad synergy between Confidants and Necropotence. If I ran Necro, I wouldn't run Confidant, and vice versa. When one is on the table, the other becomes mighty irrelevant, and this is especially a problem, as an opening Necro sadly fizzles out a lot.

Ironically, if I ran Confidant, Vault-Key would be a lot more viable. I've tested your Confidant-based version and Becker's list with the tweaks on this rather extensively via goldfish, assuming double FOW. Erik's list makes Vault-Key a win-more card, but in yours, it's a viable avenue to victory, because Confidant helps you pick up the pieces a lot quicker, and if I'm already hitting Ad Naus, I find it difficult to fathom that I'm doing it just to assemble Vault-Key. LOL.

P.S. My meta has zero Remora, unless it's Tezz running it in the board. There's a lot of Dredge and Shops, though, and one or two mirror matches.

[myw002]

Because you are running Dark Confidants in your deck, it becomes apparent that you will suffer more from life loss and be more vulnerable to bad top deck by Ad Nauseam.  Even more so, as you said, Necro becomes completely unviable (well, or at least, definitely not as useful as it was prior to the addition of Dark Confidants).  If you're running Dark Confidants, why not just run the TPS version (BobStorm?).  The addition of Dark Confidants, yes, is great.  However, it impedes upon the maximum utilization of casting an Ad Nauseam for the win. 

[AmbivalentDuck]

Against Sad Sac you can try boarding a 4th Tendrils.  The Tinker plan may not be reliable because Dark Times usually runs Edict.  Spell Pierce would probably be good against them, too.

Against any cap strategy, this is absolutely *the* correct answer.  You want to run your strategy as planned, not switch strategies.

[median]

Has anyone considered windfall, if you flipped it randomly six cards down it would draw you 6-12 cards, the only real downside is that your opponent would get cards too. Also, what about tolarian winds. These would also be great for setting up a will and ditching junk, as well as giving better mulligan options.

[Purple Hat]

Tolarian winds is great after you resolve ad nauseam....but so is everything else.  Usually by the time I could cast it otherwise I had only 2 or 3 cards in hand

[mistervader]

Windfall is good when you're comboing out with Ad. Twister is good anytime, period. That's a big difference, and with the limited slots, keeps Windfall from justifying a slot in the deck.

[zeus-online]

Windfall is great turn 1 aswell, don't forget that. Land, mox, mox (or similar) windfall is quite a strong start.

[mistervader]

Windfall is great turn 1 aswell, don't forget that. Land, mox, mox (or similar) windfall is quite a strong start.

And what do you cut in favor of it?

1 Ad Naus?

1 Necro?

1 Timetwister?

There are many situations where the card is flat-out bad. As opposed to Timetwister, where if it resolves, it is, independent of your opponent's hand, for your betterment. Also, I would infinitely prefer Thoughtseize, pass, then Draw-7 as opposed to a blind one on turn one. This implies that I'm hitting my opponent's handsize, and as such, my Windfall, if resolved, would have a terrible impact.

Ad Naus is great because we don't have to let our opponents draw a fresh grip while we draw like madmen. Let's keep it that way by limiting our draw-7's to a minimum. Seeing how Timetwister is actually a debatable slot, Windfall should already be the furthest from our mind.

[median]

I would cut a tendrils, the reasoning is it serves the same purpose if you draw it off an Ad nauseum, -if not better, and windfall is much better in an open hand.