[Free Article] City of Brass - Tropical Storm

[TheBrassMan]

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/21591_City_Of_Brass_Tropical_Storm.html

[Daenyth]

I'm glad to see an article come up about this. You did a great job at the tourney, and picked the perfect deck for that meta.

[hitman]

Great article.

[ReubenG]

Good to see a Vintage article.  I like legacy, but evryone is writing about it.

I like your tip about boarding out Hurkyl's and Rebuild for the Steel Sabotage againt blue decks since Inky is not seen often.  I also agree many lists are light on lands.

I see the updated list removed Emrakul from the board, do you find BSC enough when sideboarding in Oaths with all the artifact bounce around?

[TheBrassMan]

the sideboard plan is almost exclusively for Workshops and Fish.  Unless people start playing Welder again, there's nothing stax can do to Blightsteel that it can't do to Emrakul.  An argument could be made for Terastodon, but I was less interested in that plan.  It's possible a fish deck could have blightsteel answers that would make Emrakul seem stronger - but I'm not so worried.  If they run only a few removal spells, I'm more likely to hit than miss, and if they bring in a bunch, that probably means they're not in great shape against plan A.  If I did expect a lot of fish in the meta though, I wouldn't hesitate to drop the Minbreak Trap or 4th Leyline for another Oath critter - or possibly run a different anti-aggro plan entirely.

[Eastman]

How does this do in the shop matchup?  At first glance it looks like it would have a very hard time beating a good workshop list.  The Oath convert seems like an interesting idea to improve the matchup in a situation where spot removal simply wouldn't get you there, but is it enough?  It is not like Oath is walking around with a 90% win percentage against shops or what have you. 

Seems awesome against drain/tezz control lists though.  Just as powerful as TPS while adding resiliency I would guess.

Jesse Martin won the TMD Open 14.5 this weekend playing a Gush Storm list, although from what I saw it wasn't running ritual or lotus cobra--though perhaps when the list comes up we will see that the games I watched just did not have them.  Anyway the reason I bring it up-- during one of his top 8 matches the crowd was commenting about how many gushes he had cast, and he said that Gush was like "ancestral plus dark ritual."  With Fastbond out it certainly can be, so maybe it is a sensible inclusion in TPS. 

[TheBrassMan]

I really can't seriously comment on the deck's stax matchup - it hasn't come up enough in tournament play for me to feel definitive one way or another.  Inherently though, I always thought "basic lands + broken spells + hurkyl's recall" was one of the best plans against shops.  I'd rather play TPS in a workshop field than say, Trygon Tezzeret. 

Oath's usefulness is still a big unknown for me.  In 12 tournament matches I've brought it in twice, and it one of those games I only brought in 2 (my opponent had the ability to comfortably board out creatures, and knew I was running the card in my sideboard).  It won me one of the three games I've played with it, and was irrelevant in the other two (though I won both of those games without it).  In other words, I simply have no idea if it's any good.  If I found it underwhelming I could find more space for anti-shop cards.

Even without Oath, the list has 2 dedicated maindeck and 5 dedicated sideboard anti-shop cards, which, while less than my typical list, is equal to or significantly greater than the average blue deck (for instance, the winning decks at the recent blue bell, bloomsburg, and the stratford event itself).  If the Oath plan actually ends up being effective... that's just gravy!  If it doesnt, there are other cards I'm excited to test in the matchup.

Of course, as I said, I can't be really sure of anything until I start getting paired against Shops.

[failtofind]

i will try to write something up on it, it is still kind of a work in progress.. the fact that you can float 2 blue and play gush while your opponent knows you are playing mana drains  (or even better if not) and have a deck full of bombs to spend the drain mana on is devastating, i rarely had gush countered..I also love the fact that with tps, making a land drop every turn was a problem..in gush if you can't make a land drop you just draw two cards and then play a land. I don't really have time to get in depth about it right now, but i am basically just trying to make a deck catered to my play style and see how much i can fuse the two archetypes together before something gives, results have been pleasing, I played shops 3 times in that tournament  won two of the matches and unintentionally drew game 3 with Nick. The only match i lost was to r/g beats because i desired for 12  with less than half of my deck left (full of bombs) and fizzled. still working on a coherent sideboard plan though.

[honestabe]

i will try to write something up on it, it is still kind of a work in progress.. the fact that you can float 2 blue and play gush while your opponent knows you are playing mana drains  (or even better if not) and have a deck full of bombs to spend the drain mana on is devastating, i rarely had gush countered..I also love the fact that with tps, making a land drop every turn was a problem..in gush if you can't make a land drop you just draw two cards and then play a land. I don't really have time to get in depth about it right now, but i am basically just trying to make a deck catered to my play style and see how much i can fuse the two archetypes together before something gives, results have been pleasing, I played shops 3 times in that tournament  won two of the matches and unintentionally drew game 3 with Nick. The only match i lost was to r/g beats because i desired for 12  with less than half of my deck left (full of bombs) and fizzled. still working on a coherent sideboard plan though.

Your list is a fucking monster, and I'd love to see some sort of primer.

Also, in testing with Brassman's list, I really loved Dark Ritual, and really missed it when playing Jesse's.  Have you tried ritual, if so, what made you want to cut it

[Rico Suave]

Well Dark Ritual is the sort of card that isn't really good against Workshops in the first place.  Even BrassMan talked about SB'ing them out against Workshops.  Sure you get to play Necro which is a huge bomb, and maybe something like Bargain too, but if you can't leverage the speed of Ritual into something effective you're at a disadvantage against other control/combo decks too because you have mana where they have disruption/business.

Ritual is admittedly better against decks like Dredge, Fish, and a few others though. 

Some of it might also depend how comfortable you feel playing cards like Tendrils, Mind's Desire, or other combo oriented cards without Ritual. 

What exactly made you miss Dark Ritual?  It's mostly there for speed purposes, but these decks are pretty fast even without Ritual.

[honestabe]

It was pretty much that I missed being able to pump out a really quick desire.

I also felt that rituals just made the clock a lot quicker, and facilitated stronger early plays

[liontruth]

@brassman: Nice article, I've been tinkering on how to include gush on my tps deck.

Have you tested doomsday? and if the field has less mud would you opt for a fewer land count (at least 14) and include some ponder and preordain?

[mistervader]

@brassman: Nice article, I've been tinkering on how to include gush on my tps deck.

Have you tested doomsday? and if the field has less mud would you opt for a fewer land count (at least 14) and include some ponder and preordain?

Be that as it may, this only means Tendrils should've gone away from my list.