Doomsday (the Ritual approach)

[AmbivalentDuck]

It's not clear to me that Confidant and Gush belong in the same deck.

[Soly]

The Idea with Confidant and Deathrite Shaman is that they give you reach against the current Aggressive Strategies. 

[Cruel Ultimatum]

Soly, your deck sounds sweet.

[Guli]

The Idea with Confidant and Deathrite Shaman is that they give you reach against the current Aggressive Strategies. 

But why would you still play Doomsday then?

[NiRVeS]

TBH, I'm having a hard time seeing the advanteges of playing Deathrite / Bob in Doomsday.
On the other hand, it would be easier to discuss if we'd have an actual decklist to look at  .

[wiley]

He already said he doesn't play 4 dday in that deck.  More likely it is a new-ish version of gwsx that has a dday to set up a kill with either tendrils or lab man, to go along with a demonic consultation to give lab man another way to win.

I like the idea that you would give fish decks more targets to waste their creature removal on, but I am interested in how that strategy fairs against control oath.  Doubtless if you know they are on oath you go gushbond route, but this opens you up to game one blowouts.

As for gush and bob in the same deck, it has been tested successfully in the past, and even with gush the cmc of the deck is fairly low with only force and gush doing real damage.  Plus the gwsx style of play for a deck is to mini-tendrils as a sort of drain life or corrupt to time walk against both your own self damage and damage from other decks.  And drs makes tendrils far more potent, making the required storm count lower in leading turns and helping with mana requirements on the storm turn.

I'll have to try building a list today and see how close I get to Soly's.  The last time I tried to build gwsx I didn't even think of lab man as an alt kill, or using gush.

[NiRVeS]

I'm sorry, could you explain what "gwsx" means? I'm unfamiliar with the term.

[xouman]

I'm sorry, could you explain what "gwsx" means? I'm unfamiliar with the term.

After googling gwsx, this is the first post:

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=35930.0

GWSx: Dark Confidant fueled Ritual combo , by the member formerly known as M.Solymossy.

[wiley]

From the Ecyclopedia:

Bob Tendrils

The Basics:
Bob Tendrils is a storm deck designed to kill with multiple smaller tendrils of agony.  Opting for a slightly slower game plan than other tendrils decks it uses dark confidant (bob) as a potent source of continuous card advantage and a way to ease the storm requirement for lethal tendrils (every hit bob makes means 1 less storm count).  The deck is most often characterized by these two cards, hence the name.

Other Notes, Matchup Info, etc.:

Relevant Links:
GWSx: Dark Confidant fueled Ritual combo
GWSx (Vintage Imporvement forum thread)
GWSx: Ritual combo after the printing of Lodestone Golem

Soly was one of the first people to popularize the strategy, using the name gwsx.  Sorry for any confusion, I know how strange deck names in magic can be.

[AmbivalentDuck]

One thing that's gone unmentioned in all of this is that Dack Fayden can behave like Gush.  Cast Doomsday, activate Dack's +1, and win off Lab Man. Post-Dack Grixis Control might well use Doomsday as its kill since Doomsday-LabMan is arguably better than Tinker-Blighty in a world with Dack.

While this isn't too dissimilar in theory from "the Tinker deck," it would be the most explosive combo kill ever available to a Vintage control deck. Even Blighty doesn't have haste. Gifts had to be cast during the previous endstep and YawgWill couldn't get Extirpated (I loved giving people Lotus + Recoup). This would also be the most Brown-resistant combo build ever. I'm not sure what the decklist looks like (why Bob when you can Dack?), but I doubt it runs Gush or Bob.

[Soly]

Well, I can tell you that Doomsday has INFINITE more weird stacks to win the game with The Confidants.    And I was trying it as an experiment but it turned out very successful so far in a few games.

The oath Matchup is rough, but Shops are a LITTLE better.  You can realistically cast SERENITY though, which is something I always wanted to try in Doomsday.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Post-Dack Grixis Control might well use Doomsday...it would be the most explosive combo kill ever available to a Vintage control deck.

Wrong on both counts.  The cost, vulnerability and lack of synergy make Doom>Lab much worse than Tinker>BSC.  Also, the first modern errata allowed a hasty win with Flame Fusillade>Time Vault.

That being said, I think this kind of mashing up of archetype pieces is awesome.  Given the rate of new relevant cards, I think we're always falling short of the total design envelope given how small the community is.

[JACO]

I'm sorry, could you explain what "gwsx" means? I'm unfamiliar with the term.

After googling gwsx, this is the first post:

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=35930.0

GWSx: Dark Confidant fueled Ritual combo , by the member formerly known as M.Solymossy.

Yes, it's based entirely upon the deck I designed for Nick Trudeau for 2006 Vintage Champs that we called BHWC Tendrils (as I could not attend that year, he was the only person playing it, and Top 8'd with it; if you look in the coverage you can see my Alpha Moxen and Japanese Foil Brainstorms!).
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Events.aspx?x=mtgevent/vintage06/welcome

The entire concept was to abuse Confidant and not be reliant on a single Tendrils or strategy to win the game, but have access to lots of mana and basic lands, multiple Rebuilds, and lots of bounce to ignore Workshop hate. TPS variants at the time would often fold to a single Extract (see the sideboard technology) or Jester's Cap. As was demonstrated in the coverage (with Nick getting a first turn kill on his final match of the Swiss), the deck was capable of playing extremely fast, but also had mid to late game with the card drawing from Confidant (aside from the usual bombs like Necropotence or draw 7's). Soly changed a couple cards (favoring Red, which I specifically ditched to keep better mana), and as was popular at the time, admittedly renamed it for his own team after he did well with it for a nice extended run of doing well in local tournaments. Know your history, folks.

This is much different concept than modern Doomsday, but I could definitely see the decks being merged. I tried a long time ago and gave up, because the two decks have much different strengths, and merging the two just reduced those strengths. With the current card pool it wouldn't be a bad thing to revisit it though.

[Soly]

Soly changed a couple cards (favoring Red, which I specifically ditched to keep better mana), and as was popular at the time, admittedly renamed it for his own team after he did well with it for a nice extended run of doing well in local tournaments. Know your history, folks.

That is true.  I started with BHWC Tendrils and decided that I disliked a lot of things about the deck.  I started tweaking it and modifying the list multiple ways, and made a name change on a whim.

I also Top8ed Ben Carp's ~100 Person Power 9 Tournament with the deck the day after I top8ed with Tezzeret, so it wasn't JUST Local.

A European Player named Duncan Keijzer also did very well with it across the pond, but the New England players (Incorrectly) added Force of Will to the deck.

[Grand Inquisitor]

You no longer have card QUALITY, so quantity matters

This is excellent (from Soly's original post).  But what does it say about the SWOT problems that JACO raises in terms of combining parts of GWSXBHWC.dec with Doomsday?

Doomsday seems like the ultimate card quality play.  It's leveraged now in a shell (Gush) that is all about spell density (quantity).  Is the point of this entire derail that Doomsday needs to find more alt wincons to survive in the current meta?  Outside of JCap vulnerability I'd say the existing options of Tendrils/Labman already serves this quite well.  Am I missing something?

[Soly]

The whole reason I am trying to make a more Grindy-Version is because the Metagame just isn't the best for Doomsday.  Decks like RUG delver, Merfolk, and the raise in general of aggressive decks, wether aggressive with their spells or aggressive with creatures, makes some matchups really tough.   Deathrite and Dark Confidant together give some reach and also take you away from being a real one trick pony.

It also allos you to play Cabal Therapy in your 60 easily.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Deathrite and Dark Confidant together give some reach

I think of "reach" as cards like Lightning Bolt.  Do you mean cards that you can invest limited up-front mana and then they help your game state over time?  Eg, would you consider planeswalkers "reach"?

[Commandant]

The whole reason I am trying to make a more Grindy-Version is because the Metagame just isn't the best for Doomsday.  Decks like RUG delver, Merfolk, and the raise in general of aggressive decks, wether aggressive with their spells or aggressive with creatures, makes some matchups really tough.   Deathrite and Dark Confidant together give some reach and also take you away from being a real one trick pony.

It also allos you to play Cabal Therapy in your 60 easily.

If you have to work this hard would switching archetypes not be the superior choice? Play to your strengths, do not over extend to cover your weaknesses.

[Soly]

GI:  i may or may not be playing 2 different planeswalkers. .   We'll see at the nyse event if i play sunday since im playing an established deck day 1

[NiRVeS]

Yeah, I'm still not really convinced that this midrange appraoch is really where you want to go with Doomsday. Espeically if you mention that it only slightly impacts the Workshop matchup - which IMHO is the only thing which keeps Doomsday from being the straight up best deck in the format.

Btw, I'm very well aware that this last statement seems very exagerated and cocky. It's just the conclusion I've come to draw from our testing over the past year or so. Most if not all of our blue decks would do badly or go even at best against Doomsday over an extended series of testing sessions, so if it wasn't for the lousy Workshop-matchup, I wouldn't want to sleeve up anything else. I consider my result at BoM (I consider 11/220 still pretty good) to be a testament to the strenght of the deck, more so than a demonstration of my strenght as a player (I'm pretty sure about half of my opponents during BoM and the 2 trials I played beforehand were more experienced and probably better players on a technical level).

Traditional combo-control (with vault-key + tinker-robot as kill conditions) just seems better suited to make use of Confidants and Deathrites as the game progresses.

But if you want to keep your list a secret (which is your good right, of course), I can't really comment in any meaningfull way on the strenght and execution of your concept.
Get back to us when you're ready to share, 'cause sharing is caring .

[Soly]

The Idea isn't to "make a midrange Doomsday Deck", it's to make a deck with an entirely different approach.  ANYWAY We're getting off topic.



On topic slightly, you stated that Workshops are the thing that is stopping Doomsday, but I feel that the Workshop matchup can be really assisted by going different routes. 

Steve M. tried to play Teferi's Realm, which was great but very hard to cast.  I tried Ingot Chewers, which were GREAT at buying time but were very slow and left a huge window that workshops could capitalize on via Sundering Titan or Tangle Wires, etc.   The other thing to try is a bunch of Steel Sabotage, but Chalice @1 is a problem.

I'm actually looking at white as an option to Splash.  In my Gencon and my Vintage Championship decklist, I had 1 maindeck Volcanic Island and 1 Sideboard Mountain with 4 Ingot Chewers.

I am going to go with 1 maindeck Tundra and 1 Sideboard Plains and 4 Serenity.
The card is basically a Time Walk against hte Workshop decks, because they cannot realy play around it once it's on the battlefield.

The key to both the Ingot Chewer Sideboard AND the Serenity Sideboard though is Mox Ruby and Mox Pearl, respectively.  Also, the most important card in the Workshop matchup is Mana Crypt.  Your opponent should only set Chalice of the Void = 0 (unless they're a dunce) when it's blind on Turn 1, however Sideboarded, they should be trying to set it to 1 always.  Plus, lets be honest here... most Workshop players just know the lineof play that goes "Workshop, Mox, Lodestone Golem... DERP", and Mana Crypt is the best possible way to get out behind that.

Mana Crypt also allows you to Hardcast Gush, and there have been weird pass-the-turn stacks in which I included Mana Crypt because I needed it to cast multiple spells in my pass the turn stack.

[xouman]

Indeed, serenity is like a time walk against mud, but it's probably very hard to cast on the draw. Would you consider other white cards, once you have done the splash? STP does not seem to belong to this deck, Grand Abolisher demands 2 white mana (unaffordable), orim's chant/abeyance seem really narrow... I'm interested in the idea of adding serenity, would it justify the white spash? and more important, is serenity + mana crypt enough?

[AmbivalentDuck]

I feel that the Workshop matchup can be really assisted by going different routes.

Try the 4x Abrupt Decay plan. 4x Decay, 4x Chewer, 4x Hurkyl's is pretty insane.

[Wave]

Plus, lets be honest here... most Workshop players just know the lineof play that goes "Workshop, Mox, Lodestone Golem... DERP", and Mana Crypt is the best possible way to get out behind that.

I'm a scrub at this deck but isn't Baleful Strix neraly as good in this situation? they can't remove it in a meaningful way and it goes right through most of the sphere effects, it will probably stall the golem long enough for you to recover.

I feel that the Workshop matchup can be really assisted by going different routes.

Try the 4x Abrupt Decay plan. 4x Decay, 4x Chewer, 4x Hurkyl's is pretty insane.

Maybe 4 Baleful Strix 4 Hurkyl's Recall/Trygon Predator? Strix to stall Hurkyl and predator to win.

[Tobi]

Strix is definitely interesting, but it can be tapped by Tangle Wire and removed by things like Staff of Nin and Duplicant.

You are completely forgetting Snuff Out as a way to buy enough time for either Trygon of Hukyl's-Win. It is one of the best ways to handle a first turn Golem on the draw. Not affected by Tangle Wire, also handles Metalworker and Kuldotha for virtually no cost.

I am not convinced that splashing a fourth color is the right way to handle stax. Especially if you have all the tools you need with UBg.

[AmbivalentDuck]

And I'd agree with that. Snuff Out + Decays + Hurkyl's is probably plenty. The main benefit of red and Deathrites is that you could play some number of Dack Fayden main.

[Soly]

You guys are all forgetting that Snuff Out is horrible against 85%  of the cards we care about.  Here's the most common cards we remotely care about

Tangle Wire
Lodestone Golem
Sundering Titan
Thorn of Amethyst
Sphere of Resistance
Chalice of the Void
Trinisphere

[NiRVeS]

Yeah, although I'm guessing that's what the Decays and Hurkyl's come in for...

Just throwing this out there: Teferi's Realm. Serenity is obviously superior, but this functions in a similar way and doesn't require white mana.
It's also Awesome, because it's blue and references "phasing". Gotta love those old crappy keywords.

The card is actually pretty decent, even if it is somewhat gimmicky and 1UU is quite a bit of mana in the face of mana-denial strategies.
On the other hand, it can also answer hatebears in a pinch, which Serenity only partly handles (Spirit of the Labyrinth and Canonist can be answered with Serenity, but Thalia and Gaddock Teeg cannot).

We're playing vintage tonight, but I'm gonna be the Bad Guy this time (playing prison MUD). Let's see how our other resident Doomsday pilot decides to combat me this time around.

[Soly]

I mentioned Teferi's Realm before, and actually own Japanese copies, but I found that it as VERY hard to cast.

I actually like Energy Flux in some combo decks, because while they can keep one of their annoying pieces around, usually they can't pay for many of them.

Also:  and I'm bolding this for effect. ABRUPT DECAY SUCKS AGAINST WORKSHOPS.  anyone who is boarding in more of them is actually helping their workshop player get more use out of their wastelands and ANYTHING THAT COSTS MORE THAN 2 (which again, is a bunch of things we care about

Whenever I'm playing A.D. in ANY of my decks, I board them out for cards that actually are relevant against Workshop matchups.

[NiRVeS]

Japanse Teferi's Realms? Serious #SWAG!

RE: Abrupt Decay. As mentioned in the brief SB-plan I posted, I'm actually with Soly on this one. The 1 Abrupt Decay in my board doesn't get sided in vs Workshops, for the exact reasons he mentions.