Doomsday (the Ritual approach)

[NiRVeS]

I hope you know I'm not really disputing YOU or your results, I am just putting my thoughts in regards to some thing stated for others.

Ok, I did in fact get that impression from the way your post was phrased.

Not that you wouldn't have the right to dispute either me (I AM a chump and I'm well aware of it) or our results (because result-oriented thinking has its own series of pitfalls to be concerned with). I did mean it when I thanked you for the feedback, since I really do appreciate you sharing your thoughts.

[dark ritual]

I think the nightmare match against BUG is because of the lack of rituals.
My brother (Amadeus) and I probably playing around 50-80 games a weak BUG vs. DD.
With my list you are slightly up against BUG.

Another qoestion:
Why Ingot Chewer>Snuff Out
In my opinion Snuff out is amaizing at fighting early golems or kuldothas.

[NiRVeS]

I get how upping the Ritual count can help against BUG Fish. There's certainly merits to playing a slightly more aggressive list like you do.
On the other hand, you suggest cutting the Thoughtseizes (in my list) for them, which is someting I don't like either.

They thing is, BUG poses different angels of attack, but aside from pure countermagic (and especially Flusterstorm), none of them stop you completely.
The way I've beaten most of my BUG Fish opponents up until now (which may or may not have been a fluke), is by getting a look at their hand, stripping the countermagic, and then constructing a Doomsday-plan around the angle they don't have covered (i.e. strand 'em with GY-hate and go for Gush-Maniac pile, or strand 'em with removalspells and go for Willy-Tendrils).

There's probably some bias in our own testing as well. Our most hardcore Vintage player is Gwen De Schamphelaere, who has a preference for "big" blue mana drain decks (Control Slaver back in the days, Tezzerator now). Typically a matchup where it's more about resilience than speed, and thus where discard shines and Rituals are kinda unnecessary.

As Soly mentions, a difference in playstyle does actually matter.

Just out of curiosity, Immanuel: why weren't you at BoM? I believe Bart and me were the only Doomsday-pilots in the field (and they mislabeled at least one of our decks), so you needed to come and represent man .

[AmbivalentDuck]

I think the nightmare match against BUG is because of the lack of rituals.
My brother (Amadeus) and I probably playing around 50-80 games a weak BUG vs. DD.
With my list you are slightly up against BUG.

My build is highly favored against BUG. Extirpates and Abrupt Decays are key. Talrand, Sky Summoner can be extremely cute, too.

[dark ritual]

I get the up against big blue because of the discard. I totally agree with you that your list is a bit stronger against drain decks.
But i think your deck is 70%-30% against drains and mine is 60%-40%or 65%-35%.
If the BUG pilot can play against DD, he will screw you in the majority of games if your disruption is in need of usea and DD happens most of the time via u-seas or via Lotus, mox or petal.

I would also love to include more discard, but it sucks if the opp. has wastelands.

I can´t play at the BOm because I´m a teacher and can´t get holidays if i want to. 

[AmbivalentDuck]

Maybe this is a stupid thing to put in this thread because people are so bad at it, but what do you think your match win% is against the major archetypes? AND WHY do you think your numbers are different from other Doomsday builds.

--My build--
Other combo: 65-35
4C humans: 65-35
LandStill: 65-35
Grixis control: 60-40
BUG: 60-40
Oath: 55-45
Dredge: 50-50 (die roll really matters)
Merfolk: 45-55
Shops: 40-60
UR(g) Delver: 35-65
White Prison: 30-70 (sb Dread of Night reverses this)

While Doomsday has a naturally good Grixis matchup, I greatly improve the BUG, LandStill, and Oath matchups with Extirpate and Abrupt Decay. Decay ensures I can hit the threats that matter even if my opponent is far ahead in card advantage and Extirpate lets me nail FoW so that they can never tap out. Decay also helps against UR Delver and Merfolk, but I just can't keep up with their answer density when there's any tempo.

The Shops matchup might be artificially bad due to my decision to be 4C instead of 3C. It's not clear to me right now that an extra color for 4x Ingot Chewer is worth it and I might cut Chewers for Deathrite Shaman/Nature's Claim/Trygon/etc. There's also a legitimate Oath plan where you just Oath up Lab Man, Oath up nothing the next turn, and win on your draw. Shops have no consistent way to disrupt this, particularly since they have no reason to keep Duplicant or Trike in against you.

[NiRVeS]

I dislike putting percentages, but generally I would descibe our build somewhat like this (based on my own testing and tournament results):

- vs TPS: advantaged (we can play the controlrole better and have a pretty good critical turn, but they can catch us off guard early)
- vs Gush storm: advantaged (not sure if better or worse than traditional TPS)
- vs Grixis and Big Blue: advantaged (the discardspells really tear these matchups open)
- vs Keeper: advantaged (I used to play keeper and got stomped by Doomsday, which is why I switched decks...)
- vs Oath: slightly advantaged (depends on what build they're on, RSD-Oath seems quite capable to hold their own versus DD)
- vs BUG Fish: slightly advantaged to even (see supra)
- vs RUG: most difficult blue matchup I've encountered thusfar
- vs Landstill: not sure. We should have enough disruption to plow through, and they hardly pose a relevant clock. So...favored, in the same vein that Legacy Stormcombo is favored vs Legacy Landstill?
- vs MUD, prison style (stax, tangle wire,...): we're dogs MD and slightly better than even post board, still disadvantaged over the match.
- vs MUD, combo style (metalworker, staff,...): better than prison MUD, making the matchup slightly favored over a 3 game set.
- vs Junk Hatebears: massive favorite
- vs Reel Fish: massive favorite
- vs 4C Humans: haven't encountered this yet, but seems highly dependent on their build
- vs Death & Taxes: haven't encountered this yet, seems bad if they play like a full-blown prison deck.
- vs Dredge: haven't encountered this yet, but we should be able to race them

My sample size is pretty small for most of these matchups, so take with a serious grain of salt...

[diopter]

Maybe this is a stupid thing to put in this thread because people are so bad at it, but what do you think your match win% is against the major archetypes? AND WHY do you think your numbers are different from other Doomsday builds.

--My build--
Other combo: 65-35
4C humans: 65-35
LandStill: 65-35
Grixis control: 60-40
BUG: 60-40
Oath: 55-45
Dredge: 50-50 (die roll really matters)
Merfolk: 45-55
Shops: 40-60
UR(g) Delver: 35-65
White Prison: 30-70 (sb Dread of Night reverses this)

While Doomsday has a naturally good Grixis matchup, I greatly improve the BUG, LandStill, and Oath matchups with Extirpate and Abrupt Decay. Decay ensures I can hit the threats that matter even if my opponent is far ahead in card advantage and Extirpate lets me nail FoW so that they can never tap out. Decay also helps against UR Delver and Merfolk, but I just can't keep up with their answer density when there's any tempo.

The Shops matchup might be artificially bad due to my decision to be 4C instead of 3C. It's not clear to me right now that an extra color for 4x Ingot Chewer is worth it and I might cut Chewers for Deathrite Shaman/Nature's Claim/Trygon/etc. There's also a legitimate Oath plan where you just Oath up Lab Man, Oath up nothing the next turn, and win on your draw. Shops have no consistent way to disrupt this, particularly since they have no reason to keep Duplicant or Trike in against you.

Thanks for posting. I'm interested by your Humans matchup. My impression was that they played a tempo game too (T1 DRS/Heirarch/Confidant->T2 Wasteland/Thalia with Missteps all the way through). I suppose they just can't answer a T3 Doomsday very easily though, and you have fewer Moxen to stone rain than the average UB(RG) combo-control deck.

Oath transforms are always interesting - I've tested a lot of non-LabMan variants, not in Doomsday specifically but other decks.

How do you feel about the Shop opponent Caging you though? Even with the LabMan kill, I always wonder if consecutive (X)1G->(X)2U spell chain is difficult to pull off. You can always point Decay at their Cage but you're likely just trying to pull off an (X)GB->(X)1G spell chain instead.

Now I'm not sure if they would bring in Cage against you since it only shuts down half your Doomsday piles but it's still not totally dead against you the way Dups and Trikes are.

[AmbivalentDuck]

I'm not advocating an Oath transform. I'm advocating 1-2x Oath of Druids in the sideboard as a way to Oath Lab Man and then deck yourself the next turn. I'm not sure it's better than Trygons, but...it probably is since you can drop Oath turn 1 and keep Lodestone Golem off the table. Most Shop builds are set up to answer Trygon, even if just by Metamorphing it. They don't know that you're not Oathing into Gris.

[Soly]

Why Ingot Chewer>Snuff Out
In my opinion Snuff out is amaizing at fighting early golems or kuldothas.

Snuff Out is amazing, but Sometimes their key permanents are not Creatures. 

[dark ritual]

Snuff Out is amazing, but Sometimes their key permanents are not Creatures. 
[/quote]

and what permanents you mean by that?
Snuff out can not answer sphere effects but my sideboard has hurkyl´s and trygon to deal with lockpieces.
Sure, if an opp. drops 2-3 spheres in the first 2 turn and than lands a smokestack I´m history...
But my main concern with MUD is golem and kuldotha.
For example:
I had a third game in a turnament against mud.
He plays first turn golem and chalice 0.
Me: Fetch=>swamp snuff
He: Thorn and kuldotha
Me: Land Snuff
2 turns later i had a trygon with force backup.

Sure, not the the most likely scenario but it shows perfectly the power of snuff out.

[NiRVeS]

The main permanent I'd like to get rid of in the early turns is Chalice of the Void @1, since that will often impeed you from digging towards more sideboardcards or your killconditions.

[dark ritual]

The main permanent I'd like to get rid of in the early turns is Chalice of the Void @1, since that will often impeed you from digging towards more sideboardcards or your killconditions.

that is absulutly true for your sideboard plan.
i have such a high number of sideboard cards that most of the cantrips go out.

out:
2 preordain
2 fluster
3 missstep
1 duress
1 necro
1 ritual
1 doomsday
1 night´s whisper
1 merchant

in:
2 trygon
3 hurkyl´s
2 steel sabotage
1 swamp
1 forest
4 snuff out

against blue controll decks the 2 extirpate are my allstars.
peak the hand
get rid of the most anoying  counters
blank snapcaster
and the absolutly best: opp. can´t do anything against it

[The Atog Lord]

I've played a reasonable amount of Ritual Storm, and a reasonable amount of Gush Storm. I was wondering what advantages the Doomsday deck has over traditional storm (e.g., Reid Duke's deck). I played Ritual Storm in the last event I played in, and it went well. But whenever I've looked for Ritual decks that have done well, I keep seeing Doomsday builds. Looking at the lists, it seems like the Doomsday lists have more disruption but less fast mana and fewer game-ending bombs. Any insight into understanding the difference between the decks would be great. Thanks!

[NiRVeS]

I've only briefly dabbled into classic stormcombo, but to me, TPS felt a lot less "controlled" as a combodeck.

Mindset when playing Doomsday: controlled and methodical. Win the counterwar and go for a sure kill.
Mindset when playing TPS: aggressive, "jam bombs and hope one resolves".

The draw7's in TPS serve a hybrid role as "duress-effects" and winconditions, which is a quality Doomsday hasn't, but you're also *garanteed* to win once you assemble (and resolve) Doomsday + any cantrip/gush. TPS generally generates a new 7-card hand for both players instead, which will often result in a lethal stormchain, but does have a certain rate of failure too.

Keep in mind that Doomsday has all the necessary tools to perform a more classic Gush-Bond or Ritual-Tutor chain into Yawg.Will into Tendrils as well. You can get plenty of wins without having to resolve the actual Doomsday itself.

Lab Maniac/Gush also allows for a lot of flexibility, since it allows you to sidestep commonly played hatecards like Null Rod and cards which attack the graveyard (although TPS can win without Yawg.Will too, obviously). Especially against MUD, the Maniac package allows you to kill even through multiple spheres (Torn of Ametyst is especially easy when you're only casting Maniac and Gushes).

My personal opinion is that Doosmday is a superior deck, just because I like combo-control as an archetype more than straight speed-combo. But it's definitely a matter of taste as well. The principal advantage for TPS, is what happens when you don't have countermagic/discard to fight (or knowledge about) your opponent's disruption. With TPS, you force them to trade their disruption for your bomb and move on, whereas with Doomsday, you risk just losing on the spot if they let Doomsday resolve and have a meaningful way (*) to stop your kill-mechanism. But naturally, as is the case with most combo-control decks, the whole "art" of it is obviously to never put yourself into that position in the first place (unless you absolutely have to).

Grtz

(*) And a good grasp of timing, since many DD-piles can include a Duress or Flusterstorm to play around anything which doesn't target your draw-spell to attack the pile.

[Guli]

Maybe this is a stupid thing to put in this thread because people are so bad at it, but what do you think your match win% is against the major archetypes? AND WHY do you think your numbers are different from other Doomsday builds.

--My build--
Other combo: 65-35
4C humans: 65-35
LandStill: 65-35
Grixis control: 60-40
BUG: 60-40
Oath: 55-45
Dredge: 50-50 (die roll really matters)
Merfolk: 45-55
Shops: 40-60
UR(g) Delver: 35-65
White Prison: 30-70 (sb Dread of Night reverses this)

While Doomsday has a naturally good Grixis matchup, I greatly improve the BUG, LandStill, and Oath matchups with Extirpate and Abrupt Decay. Decay ensures I can hit the threats that matter even if my opponent is far ahead in card advantage and Extirpate lets me nail FoW so that they can never tap out. Decay also helps against UR Delver and Merfolk, but I just can't keep up with their answer density when there's any tempo.

The Shops matchup might be artificially bad due to my decision to be 4C instead of 3C. It's not clear to me right now that an extra color for 4x Ingot Chewer is worth it and I might cut Chewers for Deathrite Shaman/Nature's Claim/Trygon/etc. There's also a legitimate Oath plan where you just Oath up Lab Man, Oath up nothing the next turn, and win on your draw. Shops have no consistent way to disrupt this, particularly since they have no reason to keep Duplicant or Trike in against you.

Humans can be designed in such a way that it is virtually impossible for combo to make a dent. But the thing is, a deck like doomsday can prey upon Humans because Humans has to build towards the dtb's like Bug fish, Workshop variants (combo, prison or aggro), Oath variants (control or combo) and JaceControl. It is barely possible that Humans succeeds in covering against these tiers. This makes it harder against the all in combo decks of course. So yes, I agree that the most recent versions of 5C Humans are vulnerable and the combo pilot is favored in the match up.

However, a turn 1 Thalia with a good follow up does do the trick. It is just that there isn't really that much more the Human deck can do than to hope for a turn 1 Thalia to really slow down things. I still think your percentages are off though. I don't think you will reach 65-35 in the long run. And all it takes is to add more hatebears in the Human deck to drastically change the numbers in the match up. This makes it even so relative and highly meta dependant. My question is, why would you want to have a 65-35 win percentage against an underdog anyway?

[A.-1.]

It's not that Doomsday is designed to beat 4C Humans in particular. It just happens to have a favorable matchup. There's no need to defend your deck. I highly doubt that Duck is attacking it in any way.

[The Atog Lord]

Thank you, NiRVeS.

On paper, at least, it looks like the TPS deck has a better Workshop matchup than the Doomsday deck. I base this on absolutely no testing with Doomsday. But, it looks like the fast mana of TPS would facilitate more first-turn wins on the play, and more ability to keep pace mana-wise with Workshop. Further, the plan of boarding in Basics and Bounce seems powerful for TPS, and I'm not sure if Doomsday can match that. But, again, this is entirely based on looking deck lists and not based on any testing at all, so I would be quite happy to be corrected by someone with experience.

Looking further at Doomsday lists, I am left to question why they would run less than a full set of Gitaxian Probes. Once again, I ask this as someone with no experience with the deck. Gitaxian Probe in TPS fundamentally makes the deck better. Oftentimes, knowing when to hold back and when to move in is difficult, and Probe makes that decision much easier. I've found that TPS with Probe is a much better deck than it was prior to its inclusion. And looking at Doomsday, the deck seems even more suited to the strengths of Gitaxian Probe. As a Force of Will deck, Doomsday can benefit from the increase Blue count that Probe offers. And beyond that, as another zero-mana draw spell, Probe would appear to enable more Doomsday chains. Together with the general potency of knowing the opponent's hand in a combo deck, I am wondering why there are fewer than four copies in the deck.

[NiRVeS]

I'm not in the mood right now to write a sufficient answer to all the questions contained in your post, so I might expand this response later on.

As far as Probe goes:
- The DD-lists with 0-2 Dark Rituals are less interested in speed, favoring more control elements instead. More aggressive lists, which lean more heavy on Dark Ritual, sometimes have more probes. The playset of discardspells in my list sort of takes care of getting the information about my opponents grip.
- Lists like mine, which already echew the 4th Preordain, would rather complete the playset of preordains first, before adding more probe's.
- The life loss (assuming we're generally not interested in actual Peek) actually matters in scenarios where you've got to pass the turn after casting Doomsday (which you generally avoid like the black plague, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, sometimes).
- Gush is vastly superior when it comes to attacking the DD-pile. As a matter of fact, you can't go off (at least, our team hasn't found a pile yet) with Doomsday into Probe if you don't have any extra mana or landdrop (although a single U is sufficient to get things going: Recall-Lotus-Petal-Will-Maniac).
- You really only need Doomsday + Gush (and the 2 lands to altcast it) or Doomsday + cantrip + U available to combo out. More probes wouldn't offer any (relevant) additional piles or spellchains.
- The decklist is actually rather tight. Adding more probes would either push out some of the defensive slots (which I would rather not, again the whole "combo-control" thing), the SDT (which can in fact go, but I'd rather have preordain 4 or another counterspell of some sort) or Time Walk (which is not that great in this deck, but necessary for a couple of DD-piles that win through Chalice @ 1).
- Contrary to TPS, our blue count is pretty decent for supporting Force of Will, thanks to the Gushes, Preordain and other countermagic.

With regards to the workshop matchup and the comparison with TPS: especially on the play, you're definitely right. This is why you sometimes see additional Moxen, Sol Ring or Mana Crypt in the board of Doomsday: to allow us to develop our mana on turn 1 on the play vs Shops.

The basics + bounce plan is pretty effective in Doomsday as well - although in those scenario's, it generally takes Dark Ritual or BLotus to get Doomsday on the stack, which is a constraint TPS doens't suffer from. Doomsday can support up to 2 basic islands maindeck, which is not to shabby I think. Anyway, the less explosive nature (compared to TPS, since the deck still tends to kill by turn 3) of Doomsday, is why you see people going for more of a mid/late-game plan in Predators and/or Chewers instead of the straight basics+bounce plan found in traditional TPS.
I would like to add, however, that Doomsday does allow to win through extremely locked-up boards. If they pile up on spheres, but couldn't resolve a creature to pressure you life total, there's always the 4 counterspells/bounce/removal/lands + Lab Maniac pile. It's not pretty, but it does allow wins from positions where TPS would most likely be dead in the water (think chalices at 0, 1 and 2 and that sort of nonsense).

[The Atog Lord]

Thank you! These are excellent points.

[Smmenen]

I also answered those questions in my Dday Report and Primer from the 2011 Waterbury   http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=43231.0

Essentially what Nirves said is right, but I'd emphasize the fact that Doomsday often plays a control role against control decks, leveraging virtual card advantage and the Gush engine into a superior board position (essentially leading to an overwhelming Yawg Will).   That role requires maximal card utility in every slot, which Probe doesn't provide vis-a-vis cards like Flusterstorm.  Probing into a land is worse than just having a counterspell there in those situations.  I had one Probe in my decklist, which I believe I cut the night before the Waterbury when I realized that you don't actually need probe to win any game, but some people play it still.  

I lost to the only Workshop player in the top 8 of the 2011 Waterbury, and it has always been my view that this deck is weak to Workshops.  So your observation is true.  Folks in this thread have tried mightily to improve the Workshop matchup with a variety of tactics, like Trygon Predator, Ingot Chewer, etc.  While I think those are worth trying, I don't think they ever really give you a good Workshop match if you lose the die roll. 

[Guli]

It's not that Doomsday is designed to beat 4C Humans in particular. It just happens to have a favorable matchup. There's no need to defend your deck. I highly doubt that Duck is attacking it in any way.

I think we need to look deeper. My post implied something else than a defence. Read what Stephen said about the workshop matchup. Humans is actually doing the correct thing bye not metagaming against doomsday. But what if doomsday bolstered up his workshop pairings? I am not convinced that the human matchup just happens to be good , i believe this is the result of not being shop-proof and that humans are more worried about slower combo , shop and aggro control strategies
.

[AmbivalentDuck]

I had one Probe in my decklist, which I believe I cut the night before the Waterbury when I realized that you don't actually need probe to win any game, but some people play it still.

BUG. You've cleared out their hand, but they have a Deathrite Shaman (and the ability to pay ) and some Goyfs on the board. You have Gush, Demonic Tutor, and Doomsday in hand and a Trop and U Sea in play. I only see one pile without Gitaxian Probe that wins on the spot.

Obvious pile is:
Ancestral
Black Lotus
Lotus Petal (or Mana Crypt IF it's in)
Lab Man
Gitaxian Probe (or any draw spell if Crypt is in)

IF you have Crypt in, you can play around grave removal without Probe. Crypt is a pretty dead card in most matchups, though.

[Soly]

So this is a little bit of the wrong thread for this, but I'm currently testing a 0 ritual Doomsday deck that has 4 Deathrite Shamans in it.   I also have some other obscurities in the deck too

[The Atog Lord]

Soly, that actually sounds awesome.

[JarofFortune]

So this is a little bit of the wrong thread for this, but I'm currently testing a 0 ritual Doomsday deck that has 4 Deathrite Shamans in it.   I also have some other obscurities in the deck too

That's funny. I tested that too. In the end, I didn't think deathrite was good enough, because it does not fit well with the deck's strategy(Turn 1 fetch into deathrite, turn 2 doomsday into gush doesn't happen very often), but for all I know the other cards you mentioned could be insanely synergistic with it. Grinding games can sometimes be good with this deck too; I once beat a turn 2 balance from Burning Oath, discarding all my cards(6) except for deathrite(I had a sea in play). From there deathrite and a pair of spirit tokens killed him just in time to stop me from being hit by griselbrand . Usually, however, Rituals or counter spells were better for me in that slot.

[AmbivalentDuck]

So this is a little bit of the wrong thread for this, but I'm currently testing a 0 ritual Doomsday deck that has 4 Deathrite Shamans in it.   I also have some other obscurities in the deck too

I don't question DRS, but it's not clear to me that the correct number is 4. Just like with Dark Ritual, you really only want to see one.

[Soly]

So this is a little bit of the wrong thread for this, but I'm currently testing a 0 ritual Doomsday deck that has 4 Deathrite Shamans in it.   I also have some other obscurities in the deck too

I don't question DRS, but it's not clear to me that the correct number is 4. Just like with Dark Ritual, you really only want to see one.

See, the thing is.. I am *really* grindy with this deck.  I play it like I used to play Gifts; I'm aggressive, but not aggressive enough to constantly try to turn 2 my opponents.  My doomsday lists usually have more control than the current control decks even have, so Deathrite Shaman fits perfectly into that model.

It also allows you to cast other things very easily, like *cough* Serenity.

[AmbivalentDuck]

I guess my view is that once you have a basic Forest in the sideboard, it gets really easy to cast and support DRS against Shops. I've cut Gitaxian Probe and Dark Ritual to test 2x DRS. You mentioned becoming "grindy." Have you tried 1x Talrand or Young Pyromancer?

[Soly]

I guess my view is that once you have a basic Forest in the sideboard, it gets really easy to cast and support DRS against Shops. I've cut Gitaxian Probe and Dark Ritual to test 2x DRS. You mentioned becoming "grindy." Have you tried 1x Talrand or Young Pyromancer?

Nope, but I also play Dark Confidant. 

Hint:  I don't play 4 Doomsday.