While this may be the fastest deck it certainly isn't good at winning real life games lol. 2 players ran it today in Bloomsburg and I believe had a total of 1 match win in the event between the 2 players. Needing anti hate, plus mana, plus bomb, plus protection, and beat shops, seems awful. I beat the deck with landstill quite easily, and I saw it lose a handful of other matches as well... While true hermit druid deck may take a turn to activate it has access to better cards and more options because it plays lands. Some people may take this as a grain of salt or whatever but I am stll not sold. Doomsday is a better combo deck as well.
The exact same thing was said about Burning Tendrils, remember? Remember what Grand Inquistor and all of the skeptics said in October and November, when no one seemed to perform well. That was right before it proceeded to top 8 a bunch of events in December, including about 3-4 tournament victories and a bunch of top 8s.
It took only a few tweaks including a maindeck ETW, and the deck started performing much better. It also took improved experience.
I'm not saying that this deck is going to be a tournament buster. After all, read carefully what I wrote in this article:
To build an optimal Rogue Hermit combo deck in either Vintage or Legacy is a complicated, time intensive process. While a strong list can be developed quickly, fine tuning the card ratios and building a high impact and reliable sideboard takes perhaps hundreds of test games and probably the crucible of a tournament experience.
The same was true of my Burning Tendrils deck. The deck I presented in the article was just a first step. Hell, that was also said of my Doomsday deck. I top 8ed the waterbury, and a columbus tournament, but it wasn't until Josh Butker started playing it in the NE that people came to understand its power.
That said, I also said of this Rogue Hermit deck in the article:
It’s safe to say that many people will write this off as a glass cannon. I have serious reservations about ever playing a deck like this in a tournament as well, but not because it’s a glass cannon. I don’t think this deck necessarily folds to the slightest pressure, but I do think it has a very, very low chance of winning certain matchups, like Workshop on the draw.
I never said I'd play this in a tournament. I never even made tournament claims. The only claim I made over and over again is that this is the fastest deck ever, and has viable plans for difficult scenarios via angles of attack.
Let's not jump the gun from a single or even a few tournaments. If we used that same logic, my Burning Tendrils deck wouldn't be viable either
And, my performance with Doomsday at the Waterbury in 2011 would have just been aberration, arguably.
Not to pick on Psyburat, but looking at his list, for example:
4 Balustrade Spy
3 Undercity Informer
4 Narcomoeba
1 Angel of Glory's Rise
1 Bridge from Below
1 Dread Return
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Wild Cantor
4 Force of Will
4 Pact of Negation
4 Summoner's Pact
3 Gitaxian Probe
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Flash
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
3 Cabal Ritual
3 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Opal
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Sol Ring
SB:
4 Empty the Warrens
4 Leyline of Anticipation
4 Serum Powder
3 Leyline of Lifeforce
* He cut one of the combo creatures
* He added FLash
* He used Fiend Hunter
* ESGs instead of SSGs.
Cutting one of the combo creatures will only increase your mulligan because you've increased the chance of drawing a hand without a combo part. That's the wrong direction. The goal is to make the deck more consistent. I'm not saying it's going to smash up tournaments, as I never said that (I even said I would have reservations about playing this in a tournament), but let's not jump the gun here and say that this deck's bad performance in one tournament renders it clearly unviable. This list is, imo, the wrong direction. Flash is not good, imo, and Fiend Hunter is bad against Control when you have Pacts on the stack. You need Lab man, I think.
Also, why play 1 SSG maindeck and 4 ESG, instead of 4 SSG and 1 ESG? How can you reliably cast ETW with that configuration? That mana configuration doesn't even make sense.
Trust me, I've been testing just about every iteration of this deck that I can and it lacks the ability to be a competitive deck because it tends to rely on a full grip of relevant cards and anti-hate/disruption takes up slots in your hand that you'd rather be devoted to executing the combo itself.
No offense, but I don't trust you -- and I also don't trust your testing more than mine. In the original thread, you didn't even understand the combo:
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=44954.0You said:
Guys, easy to miss this non-bo. It says "land" and not "basic land." That is a huge difference and still makes Hermit Druid vastly superior cause you can still have a manabase of duals/cities with that deck. Sorry guys. Non-bo in Vintage.
-Storm
You didn't even understand how the combo worked. I mean, that post kinda illustrates your skepticism from the beginning. I mean this in good faith, but why should I trust your testing now? Or your (frankly laughable claim) that you've tested every possible permutation of this deck (even I haven't done that!).
This deck is only marginally less reliant on every card in hand than Meandeck Tendrils was and that deck is basically COMPLETELY unplayable nowadays.
This exemplifies the problem with your previous post, which I'll deconstruct in a moment. But again, it's the wrong comparison. Why are you comparing this deck to Meandeck Tendrils. The comparison is Belcher.
Belcher requires 7 mana, this requres 4. Obviously, in terms of pure mana efficiency, that is a huge improvement. Obviously, it trades that off with graveyard hate. But stop comparing it to meandeck Tendrils. That's not even a close comparison. Meandeck Tendrils is trying to get to 10 storm on turn 1. THis is trying to get to 4 mana and cast a 3cc or 4cc creature on turn one. It's much more comparable to Belcher.
Your quick slapping down of anyone that doesn't share your view on things when you feel you've found the next "broken" deck just illustrate your unbridled arrogance about Vintage.
How have I slapped down anyone? I have not yet once in this thread claimed that this deck is great or even likely to win tournaments. Not once. A careful read of this article will show that I have a quite balanced view.
My response was absolutely proportionate to yours.
Let's deconstruct it:
Stephen, I can't understand why you think this deck is good.
This is just an incendiary comment. Obviously if you read the article, I explain why: it offers the possibility of a Belcher deck with a 4 mana kill instead of a 7 mana kiill. The reduced mana requirements means increased speed and room for disruption. Obviously, that's the promise of this deck.
I have been testing it out and even GOLDFISHING it has to mull way too often to be good.
Again, instead of coming at me with actual data (which I present in the article) you just make a hyperbolic claim.
What does it actually mean to mulligan too much? You dont even attempt to answer that question. Nor do you dispute the evidence i present in the article. You just come out swinging. That's not the hallmark of a good faith discussion.
For example, if you were serious you might show some data on how often you mulligan, and why you believe that renders this unviable. Conversely, you might also show how attempts to improve the mulligan rate are futile.
In my response, and in this article, I showed how there are two main reasons this deck mulligans:
1) Not having a combo part in hand (Spy/Informer/Belcher/ETW)
2) Not having a black mana (Chrome Mox, Jet, Petal, Lotus, Opal, Cantor)
Yet, I also showed or suggested how you might alter the deck to reduce the mulligan rate. Instead of actually having this conversation, you just came out swinging on the attack.
That doesn't suggest an open mind or even a willingness to entertain this deck as an option.
Don't mean to be harsh, but let's get real please?
That comment is just incindiary, so please don't feign indignation at anything I said to you...
I respect your ingenuity and all you've done to help promote this format, but sometimes you can just be downright dismissive and you need to understand that.
How am I being dismissive? Aren't I doing the opposite? Aren't I the one who is saying that I think this deck might have potential, without saying exactly what that might be?
Sometimes you're not correct in your assessments of cards/decks and others are. I sure know that is the case with me and I'm a reasonably intelligent magic theoretician/deck builder. Like from where I'm standing, if you can't see how hopeless the shop matchup is with this deck then "I can't help you." You can reel off whatever you like about Leyline of Anticipation and Spirit Guides into Nature's Claim, but those are the most laughable answers to shops in reality. Like in REAL games. If you are running 4 Leyline of Anticipation what's to stop a non-trivial number of games where you get 2 in the opener and thus have only 5 cards now to assemble the combo? Even 6 cards can sometimes not be enough. And if you think a shop player is worried at all about you burning 2-3 cards just to kill a single sphere then you clearly don't know just how brutal shops is. Nature's claim off non-reusable mana is just a laughable answer to shops.
This deck doesn't even have Nature's Claim.
More broadly: your point that this deck folds to Shops: yeah, it's not a good matchup unless you win the die roll. But that's no less true of my Doomsday deck, or, to a lesser extent, my Burning Tendrils decks.
I try my best to not step in and comment on new strategies as I find them intriguing and healthy for the format. However, this isn't a strategy, it's a suicide mission. This can't even be classified as a glass cannon as it lacks the structural support that glass lends. This deck mulligans against pilots very poorly, and this is a problem. In order to beat FoW on the play you need at least 1 protection card AND your combo. Not that easy. Essentially scooping to Shop decks in a 3 game set is a serious problem. You can win the die roll and still lose the match to having to pass the turn once. Losing to GY hate in G2/G3 is a problem when the format is prepared for Dredge. Sure, you have the Empty plan, but people play cards like Explosives, Pyroclasm, and Blightsteel to beat that with the little/no protection you have for your 6-10 Goblins. Even just playing blockers/attackers like LSG+Meta/Steel is enough to push back. This deck lacks the potency to win through hate without god hands. Any deck can win with god hands.
TL:DR - Deck is cute, not viable in a meta-game with FoW, Leyline otV, and Sphere effects.
I don't deny that all of these problems are issues for the deck, from the mulligan to the Shop matchup. But what I do deny is that we should immediately write it off. I offered this deck in this article not as a final build, but, as I explained if people carefully read it - as a starting point. I only completed the first three steps (I broke the middle part of the article into steps) and clearly explained that there was much more work to do.
As I said:
To build an optimal Rogue Hermit combo deck in either Vintage or Legacy is a complicated, time intensive process. While a strong list can be developed quickly, fine tuning the card ratios and building a high impact and reliable sideboard takes perhaps hundreds of test games and probably the crucible of a tournament experience.
The mulligan rate can be improved. I already think there are probably better ways to build this. It probably should only have 1 Mox Opal, and 2 Wild Cantor, for starters, to help with mulligans. It may also want ETW maindeck instead of Belcher. The Green Spirit Guides should probably also be Red first, to more reliably support ETW. It may also want 2 ETW maindeck.
***
I do not have a strong opinion on the future of this deck, one way or the other.
I never said that I thought this deck would be winning tournaments (unlike I did for Burning Long or my Gush Doomsday deck).
I didn't write this article because I thought this deck broke the format. I wrote this article because I found this deck interesting, and thought readers would as well. I also think there is merit in the idea that a 4 mana win condition with no storm requriements is worth pursuing in this format. It's something we've never had before.
But I will say that some of the skepticism now emerging mirrors, for example the skepticism in the Burning Tendrils thread, which was proven unjust in a few months. It only takes a few tweaks to potentially make this viable or more viable. Just a few cards can make a tremendous difference. Adding ETW to the Burning Long maindeck and more Ancient Tomb /Maniac seemed to help other people do better with it. Similar tweaks could be forthcoming to this as well.
