[Free Article] Deck Archaeology with Team R&D

[voltron00x]

Team R&D has two of the better deck-builders and format-analyzers I've come across in my time playing Magic.  So, today, some of my general thoughts on why you should learn to speak the language of decks, and then some practical application with Rich Shay in Legacy (Dreadstill) and Brad Granberry (Vintage).  Hope you enjoy.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/21126_The_Long_and_Winding_Road_Deck_Archeology_with_Team_RD.html

[A.-1.]

The Q&A section after the Vintage deck was interesting but left me with several questions.  If there's going to be a follow up next week, disregard all these questions.

Brad and/or Matt: Are 20 blue cards enough or did you find yourself 'stuck' with FoW and no other blue card especially in post-board games?
Is the plan to just race Oath without Nature's Claim?
How is it difficult for Noble Fish to fight Tendrils?  Noble Fish often runs Meddling Mage and/or True Believer, yet you're not running any way of dealing with those cards.
Was Empty the Warrens in place of or in combination with Tendrils tested?
The transformational sideboard against MUD is interesting.  What are you siding out to accommodate so many cards?

Good read.  I've been wondering what a viable Gush Vault deck would look like.

[Tempus]

Today is the "post good articles"-day. Thanks

Great read.

Concerning the sideboarding against MUD: With this I'd probably go

-4 Gush
-1 Fastbond
-1 Gifts
-1 Tendrils
-3 Thoughtseize

+4 Chewer
+4 Grudge
+1 Mountain
+1 Needle (Hellkite, Wasteland)

[voltron00x]

The Q&A section after the Vintage deck was interesting but left me with several questions.  If there's going to be a follow up next week, disregard all these questions.

Brad and/or Matt: Are 20 blue cards enough or did you find yourself 'stuck' with FoW and no other blue card especially in post-board games?
Is the plan to just race Oath without Nature's Claim?
How is it difficult for Noble Fish to fight Tendrils?  Noble Fish often runs Meddling Mage and/or True Believer, yet you're not running any way of dealing with those cards.
Was Empty the Warrens in place of or in combination with Tendrils tested?
The transformational sideboard against MUD is interesting.  What are you siding out to accommodate so many cards?

Good read.  I've been wondering what a viable Gush Vault deck would look like.

To answer some of your questions...

20 blue cards is enough in my opinion, I've run decks in the 17-18 range, which is about as low as I usually recommend.  Yes, you're just racing Oath.  It might not sound that reasonable, but in testing, the match-up is favorable for GushVault pre-board.  re: Fish; Theoretically, it shouldn't be that hard for them to stop Tendrils, provided they know its coming and want to stop it, but with three potential win cons (Tinker, Key/Vault, Tendrils), the Fish deck needs to have the right cards at the right time.  I suspect that if I was anticipating lots of Fish, he'd add a singleton sweeper, something along the lines of Firespout / Virtue's Ruin / Massacre.  I'm not sure if Brad tried ETW, but Storm is really a back-up plan and Tendrils is probably the best one if you're only playing 1x. 

[Rico Suave]

The Q&A section after the Vintage deck was interesting but left me with several questions.  If there's going to be a follow up next week, disregard all these questions.

Brad and/or Matt: Are 20 blue cards enough or did you find yourself 'stuck' with FoW and no other blue card especially in post-board games?
Is the plan to just race Oath without Nature's Claim?
How is it difficult for Noble Fish to fight Tendrils?  Noble Fish often runs Meddling Mage and/or True Believer, yet you're not running any way of dealing with those cards.
Was Empty the Warrens in place of or in combination with Tendrils tested?
The transformational sideboard against MUD is interesting.  What are you siding out to accommodate so many cards?

Good read.  I've been wondering what a viable Gush Vault deck would look like.

The blue count does dip significantly against Workshops post-board, but with the influx of spot removal there are very few things we *need* to stop from resolving - namely Karn and Duplicant.  And Duplicant is only a concern if we're Tinkering, which is a play we set up on our own terms.

As for SB'ing, Tempus hit it pretty accurately.  My "standard" plan is making all the changes he wrote out, and also taking out Regrowth for a 2nd Needle.  Of course this depends on the circumstances, and SB'ing should be both fluid and dynamic.

Against Oath, keeping it off the board is a viable plan.  Sometimes, racing it is the right thing to do.  In a lot of instances the Oath trigger won't be lethal anyway, like if they reveal a Tinker robot or w/e.  

It's tough for Fish to fight Tendrils in my experience.  This might not be true for everyone, but when I have tested Fish variants (mostly Noble Fish) the Tendrils kill is used far more often than not.  The Fish deck is often loaded with board control elements like Pridemage and Predator, which are all useful against Vault/Key but not so effective against Tendrils.  Cards like M.Mage usually need to name Tinker (or a piece of Vault/Key) before naming Tendrils.  And if you're going off with Will, well, Fish as a deck just isn't well equipped to stop that most of the time.  But that's just my experience.

As for Empty the Warrens, I just don't feel it is a top tier win condition in Vintage.  I'm not a big fan of casting a bunch of spells and passing the turn because it gives too much of an opportunity for the opponent to cast a bunch of spells but end with something that wins immediately.  Of course Empty is a lot better against Fish decks...but they are not a big concern anyway.

[Stormanimagus]

The Q&A section after the Vintage deck was interesting but left me with several questions.  If there's going to be a follow up next week, disregard all these questions.

Brad and/or Matt: Are 20 blue cards enough or did you find yourself 'stuck' with FoW and no other blue card especially in post-board games?
Is the plan to just race Oath without Nature's Claim?
How is it difficult for Noble Fish to fight Tendrils?  Noble Fish often runs Meddling Mage and/or True Believer, yet you're not running any way of dealing with those cards.
Was Empty the Warrens in place of or in combination with Tendrils tested?
The transformational sideboard against MUD is interesting.  What are you siding out to accommodate so many cards?

Good read.  I've been wondering what a viable Gush Vault deck would look like.

The blue count does dip significantly against Workshops post-board, but with the influx of spot removal there are very few things we *need* to stop from resolving - namely Karn and Duplicant.  And Duplicant is only a concern if we're Tinkering, which is a play we set up on our own terms.

As for SB'ing, Tempus hit it pretty accurately.  My "standard" plan is making all the changes he wrote out, and also taking out Regrowth for a 2nd Needle.  Of course this depends on the circumstances, and SB'ing should be both fluid and dynamic.

Against Oath, keeping it off the board is a viable plan.  Sometimes, racing it is the right thing to do.  In a lot of instances the Oath trigger won't be lethal anyway, like if they reveal a Tinker robot or w/e.  

It's tough for Fish to fight Tendrils in my experience.  This might not be true for everyone, but when I have tested Fish variants (mostly Noble Fish) the Tendrils kill is used far more often than not.  The Fish deck is often loaded with board control elements like Pridemage and Predator, which are all useful against Vault/Key but not so effective against Tendrils.  Cards like M.Mage usually need to name Tinker (or a piece of Vault/Key) before naming Tendrils.  And if you're going off with Will, well, Fish as a deck just isn't well equipped to stop that most of the time.  But that's just my experience.

As for Empty the Warrens, I just don't feel it is a top tier win condition in Vintage.  I'm not a big fan of casting a bunch of spells and passing the turn because it gives too much of an opportunity for the opponent to cast a bunch of spells but end with something that wins immediately.  Of course Empty is a lot better against Fish decks...but they are not a big concern anyway.

Well, against you smart Fish players will probably name Gush as Storming for the win is very hard without Gush to run the Storm engine.

[Eastman]

The Q&A section after the Vintage deck was interesting but left me with several questions.  If there's going to be a follow up next week, disregard all these questions.

Brad and/or Matt: Are 20 blue cards enough or did you find yourself 'stuck' with FoW and no other blue card especially in post-board games?
Is the plan to just race Oath without Nature's Claim?
How is it difficult for Noble Fish to fight Tendrils?  Noble Fish often runs Meddling Mage and/or True Believer, yet you're not running any way of dealing with those cards.
Was Empty the Warrens in place of or in combination with Tendrils tested?
The transformational sideboard against MUD is interesting.  What are you siding out to accommodate so many cards?

Good read.  I've been wondering what a viable Gush Vault deck would look like.

----

It's tough for Fish to fight Tendrils in my experience.  This might not be true for everyone, but when I have tested Fish variants (mostly Noble Fish) the Tendrils kill is used far more often than not.  The Fish deck is often loaded with board control elements like Pridemage and Predator, which are all useful against Vault/Key but not so effective against Tendrils.  Cards like M.Mage usually need to name Tinker (or a piece of Vault/Key) before naming Tendrils.  And if you're going off with Will, well, Fish as a deck just isn't well equipped to stop that most of the time.  But that's just my experience.

---

Well, against you smart Fish players will probably name Gush as Storming for the win is very hard without Gush to run the Storm engine.

Agree.  Since time immemorial fish players have been naming the kills against blue instead of naming the draw engines.  It used to be naming psychatog instead of Accumulated Knowledge, now it is has moved on to naming Tinker or Tendrils instead of Gush.  Still a mistake.  As a blue player, I frequently just let novice fish players resolve meddling mage, knowing they will squander the opportunity.  Against smart/veteran players, I know I may need to keep the mage from going down.    

[Rico Suave]

Naming Gush is alright, but it doesn't stop Will and restricted cards which is the real heart of the Tendrils kill. 

There's also far too much talk about Meddling Mage here, and not nearly enough talk about the far more powerful 2 drop known as Mana Drain.  That card just wrecks Fish. 

[Stormanimagus]

Naming Gush is alright, but it doesn't stop Will and restricted cards which is the real heart of the Tendrils kill. 

There's also far too much talk about Meddling Mage here, and not nearly enough talk about the far more powerful 2 drop known as Mana Drain.  That card just wrecks Fish. 

Mana Drain is marginal against Fish. If they go to drain you on turn 2 it can be dazed as easily as anything so you will probably be able to resolve that rod you needed.

As to naming stuff with MM. You are wrong. I am sorry. It is that simple. Think about it. Naming Tendrils is just god awful (I think that is obvious). Naming Will is less obviously bad, but it does not stop an opponent from any of a bajillion other lines of play.

Against traditional TPS or Bob Tendrils naming Will accomplishes:

Steers them towards Necro, Bargain, Desire, Tinker or a couple mine tendrils or bounce.

Against Gush-Bond it is even worse:

Steers them toward Gush-Bond, into bounce into Will or. . . Tinker. . . or TV/Key into beats or any other number of possibilities.


Just because a card is powerful does not mean you shut it down by itself. If you name Gush against Gush-Storm you are basically locking them out of any possibility of a Storm kill until they remove the MM. It also makes it harder for them to Dig for well, anything. It's their freaking draw engine. Sorry to sound harsh Rico, but it seems a pretty elementary mistake for a player of your caliber to make.

-Storm

[voltron00x]

Well, a  few things to consider here. Brad's deck is Gush deck, but it isn't a storm deck.  It's rather easy for him to, say, Drain a Pridemage, untap and win via Key/Vault.  Drain is undoubtedly one of the best cards in his deck against Fish.  It's a hard counter plus an acceleration tool that can speed his deck towards an end-game, Gush or no Gush.  Tinker and Gifts are actually probably going to be the back-breaker in his deck when playing against Fish, more often than not.

Now, the Gush Storm decks specifically, well, they are loaded with Tutors and Preordain.  Is shutting of Gush annoying?  Sure.  But its hardly game over.  The NEPA guys were playing Rituals this time around, with Bargain, Necro, and Desire.  I'd hardly say turning of Gush precludes them from winning the game via Tendrils.  It just, as you say, steers them toward a different play that ends with more or less the same result.