How to respond to the creature removal as beatdown

[Guli]

Bluemage, I think you should put things in perspective and context. Thrun is a real threat to aggro and slow blue control. Both these decks exist (in their own variations). And it is very unlikely that these decks will succeed in stopping the GW beatdown deck from achieving 4 mana. This is due the use of ESG, Noble, the many basic forests and plain and Scryb Ranger who can also help out in generating mana. Remember that GW is the mana advantage deck not the other way around. I use 'advantage' because it is not just about wasting their lands but to expand your mana base while doing so. Noble and Ranger do this with minimum land requirements and keeping the threat density high enough.

I don't need Tarmogoyf in a deck that successfully uses Mikaeus to have big fatties on the board. Comparing Tarmogoyf to Thrun is wrong in this specific case.

You can't deisng a deck with 60 cards that all do something against everything. You need to throw in specific hate cards in there. Thalia is not that impressive either in the long game. Why play the card? Because you need to survive the early turns and create anti symmetry. I am perfectly comfortable holding a Thrun in my hand and playing out my early threats. GW beats is not about holding counter spells in hand while you play out your cat's. It is about prioritizing your threats and making every drop count and slowly shutting off win conditions. To do this against the faster decks out there, you need to run specific hate cards that are really bad against other decks. While Gaddock is really bad versus R/G beats or Workshop, Mikaeus can be a powerhouse. Is it so hard to accept that GW beats has to run a hosing package and an aggro containment package?

It would be risky to invest 4 mana into something that might get countered by a mana drain or FoW for that matter. Thrun gives me the feeling that he is always going to give you something back for the 4 mana you give him.

[credmond]

Thrun is absolutely brutal against Landstill. They have to fall back to a weird crucible + factory plan and just block Thrun while going for a win with Jace or 2/1 flying man land. It's better than Goyf since I run Threads in my build to 2 for 1 grab Goyf.

[bluemage55]

Thrun is a real threat to aggro and slow blue control. Both these decks exist (in their own variations). And it is very unlikely that these decks will succeed in stopping the GW beatdown deck from achieving 4 mana. This is due the use of ESG, Noble, the many basic forests and plain and Scryb Ranger who can also help out in generating mana. Remember that GW is the mana advantage deck not the other way around. I use 'advantage' because it is not just about wasting their lands but to expand your mana base while doing so. Noble and Ranger do this with minimum land requirements and keeping the threat density high enough.

The problem isn't that you can't achieve 4 mana. The problem is that building your deck to consistently achieve 4 mana in time to do something relevant decreases your threat density, and while you can alleviate this slightly by using Noble/Ranger/etc., you're also better off lowering the mana curve and using the plethora of other effective threats available for 3 mana or less.

I don't need Tarmogoyf in a deck that successfully uses Mikaeus to have big fatties on the board. Comparing Tarmogoyf to Thrun is wrong in this specific case.

If your’e seriously considering dropping Goyf and relying on Mikaeus instead, you’re not playing an aggro deck anymore; you’re playing a midrange deck with some interesting synergies.  That’s fine for beating actual aggro decks and maybe aggro control, but don’t think for a second that you have any chance against blue decks simply going broken all over your face.

It’s almost as if you think you’re playing Legacy and forgot that the fundamental turn for most decks in Vintage is long before you can ever assemble your awful Mikaeus/Ranger combo.  If I ever cast Duress on turn 1 and my opponent revealed junk like Mikaeus or Thrun, I would giggle as I proceeded to draw a bunch of cards and won long before you could deploy your cards.  You’re effectively mulliganned to 5 because your cards won’t do anything to me until the game is already over.  And if you instead fill your deck with mana so you can drop your fatties, all it takes is a Drain here or FoW there to cause massive CA/tempo swings, because unlike real combo decks which invest a bunch of cards into a few bombs, you can’t actually protect your cards effectively.

Consider these two decks:

Turn 1: Land, Noble
Turn 2: Land, Ranger
Turn 3: use Ranger to tap Noble for mana twice, replay land, cast 4/4 Mikaeus
Turn 4: Lost to broken blue deck the previous turn.

Turn 1: Land, Llanowar Elf
Turn 2: Land, Imperious Prefect
Turn 3: Land, Timberwatch Elf, use Prefect
Turn 4: Lost to broken blue deck the previous turn

Is there any real functional difference between them? NO! They’re both terrible Vintage decks because they neither interact nor apply any pressure to the opponent in the first few turns!

It would be risky to invest 4 mana into something that might get countered by a mana drain or FoW for that matter. Thrun gives me the feeling that he is always going to give you something back for the 4 mana you give him.

Alternate solution: when you’re playing aggro, don’t invest 4 mana into anything in the first place!

This thread actually makes perfect sense now.  The reason why you’re so terrified of removal, to the point where you’re using junk like Mother of Runes, is because of you’re not building aggro properly.  When you play a bunch of land and mana-producing weenies (which are of course, very vulnerable to mass removal like Pyroclasm or Fire/Ice) in order to power out expensive crap, then of course losing your investment to removal is scary!  If you were instead dropping cheap, powerful, disruptive threats (e.g. Rod, Goyf, Bob, Magus, Mindcensor, Clique, Trygon), then you wouldn’t have this problem.

[bluemage55]

Thrun is absolutely brutal against Landstill. They have to fall back to a weird crucible + factory plan and just block Thrun while going for a win with Jace or 2/1 flying man land. It's better than Goyf since I run Threads in my build to 2 for 1 grab Goyf.

You can also counter Thrun with (a most likely hard-cast) Mindbreak Trap.

[credmond]

Thrun is absolutely brutal against Landstill. They have to fall back to a weird crucible + factory plan and just block Thrun while going for a win with Jace or 2/1 flying man land. It's better than Goyf since I run Threads in my build to 2 for 1 grab Goyf.

You can also counter Thrun with (a most likely hard-cast) Mindbreak Trap.

Yup, very true. I used Trap to counter Channel Emrakul before. However, Thrun is still very brutal against Landstill.

[Guli]

I am slowly moving from the concept 'trying to protect' towards the idea of 'just cast something that really hurts them'. Instead of trying to counter spot removal with mother of runes and stop mana drain with swarm or shusher, why not just identify that match up and run something stupidly good. Thrun is a good example of this. BUT, while running a silver bullet against landstill, I still want the card to be good overall. land/black lotus > Thrun on turn 1 is pretty hard to deal with as fish or aggro for example.

In the spirit of this thread, I still want to keep my idea of running hate towards the fast combo decks, even if they seem to be dormant right now. That is the reason I am running Mental Misstep, Thalia, Teeg, Stony Silence (+ acceleration). But while hating out the combo decks, it is still a good idea to also hate out opposing aggro. Ranger and Mikaeus do this nicely while also offering good support to the combo hate squad.

I am seriously considering running Great Stable Stag in addition to Thrun! And I am considering playing Cage maindeck just to annoy those combo decks even further.

Would be something like this

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Emerald
4 Windswept Heath
3 Savannah
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
3 Forest
1 Plains
1 Wooded Foothills
3 Elvish Spirit Guide
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Gaddock Teeg
3 Scryb Ranger
3 Stony Silence
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Mental Misstep
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Great Sable Stag
3 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Mikaeus, the Lunarch
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Qasali Pridemage
SB: 4 Nature's Claim
SB: 3 Scavenging Ooze
SB: 2 Thrun, the Last Troll
SB: 3 Porcelain Legionnaire
SB: 1 Great Sable Stag
SB: 1 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 1 Stony Silence

[bax]

Now i know Smmenen has removed the Noble Hierarch from his GW list, but someone has to expain to me why this is a good idea ...

The only upside i see is that on first turn i want to cast a lock not a Noble in most cases (not all). Fair enough, but apaprt from that i see no other reason for this choice.

Guli, why are you preferring the Scryb Rangers to the hierarch ?  Am i missing something ?
Or it is just me thinking that hierarch is an amazingly powerful card ?

[Guli]

Now i know Smmenen has removed the Noble Hierarch from his GW list, but someone has to expain to me why this is a good idea ...

The only upside i see is that on first turn i want to cast a lock not a Noble in most cases (not all). Fair enough, but apaprt from that i see no other reason for this choice.

Guli, why are you preferring the Scryb Rangers to the hierarch ?  Am i missing something ?
Or it is just me thinking that hierarch is an amazingly powerful card ?

Hierarch is in the list, it works well with ranger to boost up mana.

[bax]

My apologies, Guli, you are right, i erroneusly did not see it in your list and assumed you had removed them as well.

[Guli]

My apologies, Guli, you are right, i erroneusly did not see it in your list and assumed you had removed them as well.

It is an option to remove them. I am still digging and trying out things to see how it goes. Smmenen tested a vast variety of beat down decks. I am going into depth with GW and GWU these days. Last couple of weeks entirely on GW. If you want to compete in the current meta, you have to be able to consistently execute a working plan versus landstill decks. Thalia, Teeg and such do not work in the long run. They only work versus the control, combo decks. Landstill just pisses over your bears.

[nineisnoone]

Now i know Smmenen has removed the Noble Hierarch from his GW list, but someone has to expain to me why this is a good idea ...

The only upside i see is that on first turn i want to cast a lock not a Noble in most cases (not all). Fair enough, but apaprt from that i see no other reason for this choice.

Guli, why are you preferring the Scryb Rangers to the hierarch ?  Am i missing something ?
Or it is just me thinking that hierarch is an amazingly powerful card ?

GW beats and Noble decks are different builds. (see below)

I think more threats is better than trying to compete on the stack, especially now with flusterstorms and mindbreak trap. The way I see it is if you pack more and more counters in your creature deck, the more you slow yourself down. That's why your creatures should already be as disruptive as possible. Plus I like to run critters with shroud/hexproof when possible if going the beats route.

I've always been a strong proponent of more threats rather than counters or answers (to answers as opposed to threats). If you drop a 2 drop that is a must counter, then even if it is countered, it is effectively the same thing as a reactive counter spell. I.e. it just trades with the counter. Threats are better than counters in this regard, because if they draw a blank you get to punish them for it by playing a threat. And really when you think about it, 2 mana to make the opponent discard 2 cards one of them is Force of Will and the other is blue? That's not bad at all. Plus a point of damage to boot!

The question of whether to run counters has nothing to do with answering hate cards (generally at least, I suppose there are cases where it makes sense). It has to do with answering their threats, not answering their answers.  Whether or not you are playing your threats or addressing there threats is a question of design philosophy.

Noble Fish plays counters, not necessarily to protect their cards (though certainly it can play out this way), but because they have a draw engine (selkie) and additional mana (noble). This leverages them out as being strong in the later game, this means that it makes more sense for them to be less committal upfront so as to set-up their mid-game, and hence hold onto reactive cards like counters.

GW (or any hate bears deck) doesn't play counters, not because ideally they wouldn't like them, but because they do not have as strong a late game. This mean strategically they have to be committal upfront. While counters theoretically sound nice, if they opponent doesn't have a strong play, then you have essentially just given them a free turn. This is because you can't really get a "for value" play out of a counter spell, without the opponent providing you an opportunity to do so. Force of Will on Tinker is great. Force of Will on Grey Ogre is terrible. This means you want to play threat, because they are (in theory) game state independent. Or at least, should be assuming you accurately predicted the metagame.

The reason why counter-style decks have generally been more preferred is because of turn 0 interaction.

Haven't looked at his specific list (at least not recently), but I'm 99% certain that it is similar to other GW beats decks and isn't interested in the long terms gains of Heirarch. It's much more likely for them to run ESG instead to power their bears out quicky.

I am slowly moving from the concept 'trying to protect' towards the idea of 'just cast something that really hurts them'. Instead of trying to counter spot removal with mother of runes and stop mana drain with swarm or shusher, why not just identify that match up and run something stupidly good.

YES. (finally).

Thrun is a good example of this.

NO. Well, sure against landstill, I guess he's good, but honestly aggro is typically a poor match-up for landstill anyways. Most of their counters go away (REB, Flusterstorm, Mindbreak, etc) and you will dominate the ground anyways. I don't know what landstill SBs, but I doubt they can put enough removal and still have dredge hate.

[bax]

My apologies, Guli, you are right, i erroneusly did not see it in your list and assumed you had removed them as well.

It is an option to remove them. I am still digging and trying out things to see how it goes. Smmenen tested a vast variety of beat down decks. I am going into depth with GW and GWU these days. Last couple of weeks entirely on GW. If you want to compete in the current meta, you have to be able to consistently execute a working plan versus landstill decks. Thalia, Teeg and such do not work in the long run. They only work versus the control, combo decks. Landstill just pisses over your bears.

I also play only GW since last July 2011. Let's say that we play in very different meta. And it seems that in my meta the current build i play is quite performant given that got me 4 Top8 in the last 8 tournaments i played in. We have hardly any Landstill over here.

Links are here:
07/2011 http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=6510&iddeck=47145
09/2011 http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=6813&iddeck=49461
12/2011 http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=7383&iddeck=53733
01/2012 http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=7562&iddeck=54928

Thalia and Cage make the deck stronger vs Control that is the MU i usually found hard to fight.

GW beats and Noble decks are different builds. (see below)

Really ? I must have been playing Noble decks instead than GW builds so in the last 10 months given all my decks above had Noble hierarch in ....

[Guli]

Now i know Smmenen has removed the Noble Hierarch from his GW list, but someone has to expain to me why this is a good idea ...

The only upside i see is that on first turn i want to cast a lock not a Noble in most cases (not all). Fair enough, but apaprt from that i see no other reason for this choice.

Guli, why are you preferring the Scryb Rangers to the hierarch ?  Am i missing something ?
Or it is just me thinking that hierarch is an amazingly powerful card ?

GW beats and Noble decks are different builds. (see below)

I think more threats is better than trying to compete on the stack, especially now with flusterstorms and mindbreak trap. The way I see it is if you pack more and more counters in your creature deck, the more you slow yourself down. That's why your creatures should already be as disruptive as possible. Plus I like to run critters with shroud/hexproof when possible if going the beats route.

I've always been a strong proponent of more threats rather than counters or answers (to answers as opposed to threats). If you drop a 2 drop that is a must counter, then even if it is countered, it is effectively the same thing as a reactive counter spell. I.e. it just trades with the counter. Threats are better than counters in this regard, because if they draw a blank you get to punish them for it by playing a threat. And really when you think about it, 2 mana to make the opponent discard 2 cards one of them is Force of Will and the other is blue? That's not bad at all. Plus a point of damage to boot!

The question of whether to run counters has nothing to do with answering hate cards (generally at least, I suppose there are cases where it makes sense). It has to do with answering their threats, not answering their answers.  Whether or not you are playing your threats or addressing there threats is a question of design philosophy.

Noble Fish plays counters, not necessarily to protect their cards (though certainly it can play out this way), but because they have a draw engine (selkie) and additional mana (noble). This leverages them out as being strong in the later game, this means that it makes more sense for them to be less committal upfront so as to set-up their mid-game, and hence hold onto reactive cards like counters.

GW (or any hate bears deck) doesn't play counters, not because ideally they wouldn't like them, but because they do not have as strong a late game. This mean strategically they have to be committal upfront. While counters theoretically sound nice, if they opponent doesn't have a strong play, then you have essentially just given them a free turn. This is because you can't really get a "for value" play out of a counter spell, without the opponent providing you an opportunity to do so. Force of Will on Tinker is great. Force of Will on Grey Ogre is terrible. This means you want to play threat, because they are (in theory) game state independent. Or at least, should be assuming you accurately predicted the metagame.

The reason why counter-style decks have generally been more preferred is because of turn 0 interaction.

Haven't looked at his specific list (at least not recently), but I'm 99% certain that it is similar to other GW beats decks and isn't interested in the long terms gains of Heirarch. It's much more likely for them to run ESG instead to power their bears out quicky.

I am slowly moving from the concept 'trying to protect' towards the idea of 'just cast something that really hurts them'. Instead of trying to counter spot removal with mother of runes and stop mana drain with swarm or shusher, why not just identify that match up and run something stupidly good.

YES. (finally).

Thrun is a good example of this.

NO. Well, sure against landstill, I guess he's good, but honestly aggro is typically a poor match-up for landstill anyways. Most of their counters go away (REB, Flusterstorm, Mindbreak, etc) and you will dominate the ground anyways. I don't know what landstill SBs, but I doubt they can put enough removal and still have dredge hate.

Against landstill, he is the only card that does what we want. You will flat out lose the game as GW beats if you don't run something that sticks and gets through and has protection from Jace. I know the mana cost looks a lot on paper. I understand the critics on Mother of Runes and Vexing Shusher. I am fine on trying alternatives, but you seem to have a position that says; "you don't need no Thrun either". Correct me if I misinterpreted your messages. And please do concretely (cards) say what your solutions would be if not Thrun or Stable.

Remember, the lists I am suggesting and playing are all packed with Thalia as well. The first strike on her matters a lot against aggro, the regenerate and body on Thrun will matter too. The protection from blue on Scryb matters against blue fish decks, and I am sure the 3/3 body and pro blue/black (jace/dismember/snap/confidant) of Stable will matter too. As long as sufficient hate is used in a deck to hate out combo, you can play these cards to take care of other match ups.

[Guli]

My apologies, Guli, you are right, i erroneusly did not see it in your list and assumed you had removed them as well.

It is an option to remove them. I am still digging and trying out things to see how it goes. Smmenen tested a vast variety of beat down decks. I am going into depth with GW and GWU these days. Last couple of weeks entirely on GW. If you want to compete in the current meta, you have to be able to consistently execute a working plan versus landstill decks. Thalia, Teeg and such do not work in the long run. They only work versus the control, combo decks. Landstill just pisses over your bears.

I also play only GW since last July 2011. Let's say that we play in very different meta. And it seems that in my meta the current build i play is quite performant given that got me 4 Top8 in the last 8 tournaments i played in. We have hardly any Landstill over here.

Links are here:
07/2011 http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=6510&iddeck=47145
09/2011 http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=6813&iddeck=49461
12/2011 http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=7383&iddeck=53733
01/2012 http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=7562&iddeck=54928

Thalia and Cage make the deck stronger vs Control that is the MU i usually found hard to fight.

GW beats and Noble decks are different builds. (see below)

Really ? I must have been playing Noble decks instead than GW builds so in the last 10 months given all my decks above had Noble hierarch in ....

congrats, nice to hear good results!

[Blue Lotus]

In the spirit of this thread, I still want to keep my idea of running hate towards the fast combo decks, even if they seem to be dormant right now. That is the reason I am running Mental Misstep, Thalia, Teeg, Stony Silence (+ acceleration). But while hating out the combo decks, it is still a good idea to also hate out opposing aggro. Ranger and Mikaeus do this nicely while also offering good support to the combo hate squad.

See, this doesn't make any sense to me. A large percent of successful deck building is successfully predicting the meta game of the tournament you are playing. Just like you can't build a combo deck that can beat EVERY hate piece in the vintage card pool, you can't build a hate deck that is more than 50% vs every possible deck. If you have a read on what you are going to play ("combo decks are dormant") why are you ignoring that and stuffing combo hate in your maindeck?

On a side note, how have non-blue aggro decks with MM been doing? Seems just super random to have 4x conditional counters and no card draw.

Aggro + remora sounds really interesting. T1 threat (delver probably) t2 remora + pitch counters

[Guli]

In the spirit of this thread, I still want to keep my idea of running hate towards the fast combo decks, even if they seem to be dormant right now. That is the reason I am running Mental Misstep, Thalia, Teeg, Stony Silence (+ acceleration). But while hating out the combo decks, it is still a good idea to also hate out opposing aggro. Ranger and Mikaeus do this nicely while also offering good support to the combo hate squad.

See, this doesn't make any sense to me. A large percent of successful deck building is successfully predicting the meta game of the tournament you are playing. Just like you can't build a combo deck that can beat EVERY hate piece in the vintage card pool, you can't build a hate deck that is more than 50% vs every possible deck. If you have a read on what you are going to play ("combo decks are dormant") why are you ignoring that and stuffing combo hate in your maindeck?

On a side note, how have non-blue aggro decks with MM been doing? Seems just super random to have 4x conditional counters and no card draw.

Aggro + remora sounds really interesting. T1 threat (delver probably) t2 remora + pitch counters

It is not just rituals and storm kill that goes under 'combo'/control. It is about disrupting Gush, Y will, Mana drains, FoW, Jace, Tinker, TV and so on. Thalia and Teeg happen to hit a lot of the cards used by control/combo. Let me rephrase, instead of saying 'hating combo', let's just say 'making sure that you secure a mid game'. This is pretty damn logical to make and I don't really understand your confusion. As beatdown, you don't have access to a 2 card win combo, you will have to stop that 2 card win combo while you 'beat down'. You need to dedicate a certain amount of slots to stop the broken vintage lines of play and follow it up with more lock pieces and some form of clock. Thalia and mana denial accompanied with Qasali and Teeg usually get you there. Sometimes you need that STP to answer a Tinker in between.

That being said, and I hope this clears up your confusion, there is also the slow control decks out there. Landstill and Fish could fall under these. In these match ups your Thalia and Teeg will still be good, but not adequate to secure a win. You will need other forms of threats. Mikaeus, Ranger and Thrun are cards that do well in these tight match ups. What are you going to run? Tarmogoyf? Do you think it is so hard to counter your initial GW threats, then let some through to Fire/Bolt/Dismember/Sower/Threads/Stp/path them later on? On top of that, say you sneak in 1 threat in the mix of all that... say Tarmogoyf. How hard is it to bounce that with jace, stick some critters in between or get crucible active to ignore tarm while Jace has a field day?

You think you are going to win the attrition war? And if not, you think you will be able to quickly get in there and finish up things super fast?

Sounds like there should be a distinction between GW Suicide Beats and GW Midrange Beats. With Suicide I mean that you drop threat after threat and try to get there with your initial pressure taking losses along the way and hoping they don't recover. The 'midrange' approach has a strong mid game plan while trying to adequately answer the very fast decks out there. (early turns disruptive cards like Mental Misstep, Stony Silence, Thalia, Teeg, Wastelands, ...) But then again, those cards see play in the 'non midrange' GW beat decks. So what is the difference? I run Ranger and Mikaeus over Tarmogoyf and SFM?

[Blue Lotus]

Look man, I don't know where you play, I only went by what you said. When you said combo is dormant was it so wrong for me to assume you meant ALL combo and not only rituals.

It is my opinion that if you build a successful null rod deck it has to be tuned. Your 'good cards' that have 'splash hate' are too slow to just smash the field. The rod players has no card draw and too many blanks vs. various decks to not hedge. There just isn't any configuration of cards that will be favored vs TPS & gush & shops & big blue & dredge & other creature decks all at once.

So, if you get a read like "combo is dormant" and are going to play against aggro shops, landstill, other creature decks and maybe just 1 gush deck, you should probably leave those thalias at home.

[nineisnoone]

GW beats and Noble decks are different builds. (see below)

Really ? I must have been playing Noble decks instead than GW builds so in the last 10 months given all my decks above had Noble hierarch in ....

Just looked at your lists. Interesting. Obviously, I'm speaking in generalities, you could hybridize the two concepts. Looking at your list, imo, I don't see the need for it. Sure it fills the gap of giving you a turn 1 play, but ultimately  i don't see that as being worth it. what plays are the plays you anticipate it enabling?

[bax]

Just looked at your lists. Interesting. Obviously, I'm speaking in generalities, you could hybridize the two concepts. Looking at your list, imo, I don't see the need for it. Sure it fills the gap of giving you a turn 1 play, but ultimately  i don't see that as being worth it. what plays are the plays you anticipate it enabling?

Mainly a turn 1 Hierarch allows you to drop a turn 2 land destruction (waste or ghost quarter) AND a turn two lock piece such as Leonin Arbiter, Thalia, Stony Silence, Gaddock. Also fixes the manabase ans win the exalted race.

[Guli]

Just looked at your lists. Interesting. Obviously, I'm speaking in generalities, you could hybridize the two concepts. Looking at your list, imo, I don't see the need for it. Sure it fills the gap of giving you a turn 1 play, but ultimately  i don't see that as being worth it. what plays are the plays you anticipate it enabling?

Mainly a turn 1 Hierarch allows you to drop a turn 2 land destruction (waste or ghost quarter) AND a turn two lock piece such as Leonin Arbiter, Thalia, Stony Silence, Gaddock. Also fixes the manabase ans win the exalted race.

But it is a fair critics when people say that it would be better to run moxes/spirits and drop that bomb right away and skip noble. Explosiveness versus stability

[bax]

But it is a fair critics when people say that it would be better to run moxes/spirits and drop that bomb right away and skip noble. Explosiveness versus stability

Sure, and my hearth is split ont his subject, this is why i ask others opinion. And in any case i see hierarch in addition to mox and ESG, not instead - unless you want to play unspo to win the unspo prize (worthwhile in some big events).

In the past was the only strong drop @ 1 this deck had - and it as a must, now that we have cage it is still a very strong play (especially vs Shop which abund in Europe), but is it really worth to take up 4 slots ??

I suppose only testing and time will tell.

[credmond]

Noble is acceleration that comes out early, sticks around, plays synergistically with Thalia and Stony Silence, gives your creatures exalted, and puts an extra permanent on the board (to help with Tangle Wire). Even though its a weak play against quick combo its a solid play against MUD and mana denial decks.

I find that the MUD matchup determines a lot about the shape your deck can take.

[Guli]

Well quick combo could be stalled with Mental Misstep and Chalice of the Void. Then opening up with Noble in non blue creature based decks is a bit safer. The following turn you can play out that hoser and the game is once again prolonged.

That is however, 12 slots you already used for noble, MM and chalice.

I tried Chalice in a deck without noble and without missteps. I used a mox acceleration and i think esg (not sure, i probably did). It was impressive mana denial with Thalia and Revoker. Thalia Revoker and Chalice are AMAZING together. For example turn 1 land/mox/chalice and Thalia followed by turn 2 Revoker naming Sol ring means they are not accelerating with artifact mana period. And with land drops only, it is going to take a while to do something. Combine that with Leonin Arbiter/Aven and 9 strip effects and you have a prison deck. I think the white weenie decks are going in that direction now with SFM to bolster up the shop and mirror match up.

I think I will further explore the more green side of things for now

[nineisnoone]

Just looked at your lists. Interesting. Obviously, I'm speaking in generalities, you could hybridize the two concepts. Looking at your list, imo, I don't see the need for it. Sure it fills the gap of giving you a turn 1 play, but ultimately  i don't see that as being worth it. what plays are the plays you anticipate it enabling?

Mainly a turn 1 Hierarch allows you to drop a turn 2 land destruction (waste or ghost quarter) AND a turn two lock piece such as Leonin Arbiter, Thalia, Stony Silence, Gaddock. Also fixes the manabase ans win the exalted race.

Hmm... I might have to retract my statement, I'm seeing plenty of GW lists that use Heirarch. Since you are at 9 strip/waste/ghost, it makes sense to me though. I haven't been using too much ghost personally though. (not a knock on the card though).