Doomsday (the Ritual approach)

[xouman]

What about engineered explosives? Against MUD takes spheres and COTV in narrow cases. Besides, it's a permanent, and can remotely help a little building tendrils with y.will.

It helps against non-null rod aggro decks (if needed, I'm not sure), and wins time against oath/tezz. Overall a so-so card, but does not demand further colors and is best played preemtively, so you don't have to keep mana open.

[AmbivalentDuck]

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

I haven't had that problem. Decay + Chewers + 3-4x Hurkyl's lets you play a legitimate control game against Shops.

[dark ritual]

Snuff Out sucks against Golem?????
I won the third straight turnament this weekend (earning a mox) with my deck.
I´m 8-2 vs Mud in turnaments since September 2013 with this deck. So the SB works.
A mud pilot mentioned after game 2 this weekend:"I think i cannot win postboard."
That´s not my thought, but it´s pretty even.

[xouman]

Snuff Out sucks against Golem?????
I won the third straight turnament this weekend (earning a mox) with my deck.
I´m 8-1 vs Mud in turnaments since September 2013 with this deck. So the SB works.
A mud pilot mentioned after game 2 this weekend:"I think i cannot win postboard."
That´s not my thought, but it´s pretty even.

Soly said

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

Snuff out sucks against 6 of those 7 cards. Lodestone is the only one answered by snuff out. Mabye it's the hardest of them, because it adds clock, you cannot answer just golem, you have to answer more hate, and there snuff out it's not enough.

[dark ritual]

that´s true, but nobody said that you have to play only snuff out.
sure, sphere effects and chalice prevent us from winning, but you need time to cast the real hate.
that´s the point snuff out is extremly good. it buys you enough time (as tobi mentioned) to get trygon and hurkyl´s work.

[Soly]

EVERYTHING is reliant on what other pieces you have.  I prefer Ingot Chewers to blow up any permanent they put in my way, and I am not playing Trygon because I like to have as little green as possible, but it's all preference.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Curious if I'm overlooking something:

Thoughtseize, Lotus, Doomsday, Preordain. 4 storm, no untapped lands and you've already used your drop with lethal Goyf damage next turn. You have 9 life post-doomsday. Tropical Island in hand if it matters, Island and U Sea in play. No Dark Ritual or Gitaxian Probe main.

Since you have no mana, the top card must be Gush. Once you Gush, you've got two cards in your library and the cards you draw have to make mana and draw 1+ cards. Is there a pile that wins?

So:
Gush
Black Lotus
Draw Spell
Yawgmoth's Will (since you need a card AND mana, builds storm but not functionally different from Gitaxian Probe.)
Win Con

If Gitaxian Probe is the draw spell, then you can see all of your cards. You win if the win con is Tendrils and you have even a single colorless floating around. But we're short mana here and we don't run Probe. If it's Lab Man, we're short a colorless to replay Preordain from the grave and win on the spot. BUT we can at least win at the beginning of the next turn. Modestly safe against, say, Shops. Not that we'd have to Thoughtseize them in the first place.

[NiRVeS]

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).

This boils down to the same situation as you describe: Doomsday + a cantrip requires an additional blue mana to kill the same turn.

[Soly]

If your default pile has yawgmoth's will in it, you PROBABLY are doing your stack wrong.

I won 7 matches at vintage Champs and the only time I cast yawgmoth's will was when I DIDNT cast Doomsday.

[NiRVeS]

Well sure, even though it obviously depends on what information you have available.
By any means, the primary strenght of Doomsday as a strategy lies in its versatility. If they can ineract with the graveyard, you kill them with Maniac.

In which case the basic DD-piles become:

A. Gush in hand, 2 lands in play, no mana floating or landdrop)

-top-
Petal
Recall
Lotus
Maniac
Probe
-bottom-

B. Cantrip in hand, 2 lands in play UU available (or U + landdrop)

-top-
Probe
Recall
Lotus
Maniac
Gush
-bottom-

(and of course there's a million variations on this,...)

I've beaten this horse to pulp already, but for completeness sake, I'll once again note that our group is playing a build with 4 maindeck discardspells + 1 probe, which means we may often have more information about our opponent's hand available than other builds. So any statements I make should be seen in that specific context.

It's an interesting discussion, I think. In case you have no information about the contents of your opponents hand, what wincondition/pile do you prefer?

There's a lot of assumptions that can/may/should be made, just from this question.

If we're casting Doomsday, I generally assume we're at a point in the game where either:

1) You've cleared the road (either through discard or by winning a counterwar over something important, which would mean our opponent is out of options). This implies, however, that we do in fact have information about our opponents hand);
2) You have no choice but to go for it (e.g. they Tinkered up a BSC);
3) You've amassed enough countermagic and feel comfortable you'll be able to power through.

Our question in itself thus implies that we are finding ourselves in either scenario (2) or (3).

I'll also assume that avoiding graveyard interaction means killing through Laboratory Maniac, since Tendrils will most likely require casting Yawgmoths Will in order to get to a high enough Storm-count.

We've discussed this in our team, and a general approach we like is going with Yawgmoth's Will > Tendrils G1, in order to try and incite the opponent on bringing in (too much) graveyard-hate (principally grafdiggers cage, since that card has gotten ubiquitus among sideboards). Which would in turn allow us to go for a kill without graveyard-shenanigans games 2-3, while our opponent is stuck with functionally dead cards. We also consider Maniac to be the lesser known "tech" (even though it's long become industry standard for Vintage-DD) - if our opponent is only familiar with Legacy DDFT, they might assume we are strictly on the storm-plan, which might drive them to overvalue effects like Leyline of Sanctity.
It's clear that this only applies for metagames with unexperienced players though. So let's abondon this train of thought for a second.

I can think of multiple arguments which do favor a storm-kill (thus using Yawg. Will, since you need it to generate storm, usually) though, regardless of the knowledge/experience/playskill of our opponent. Here are some of them.

- There's 3 main axis of interaction through which our opponents can try to stop us: Countermagic (which interferes with any pile we make, so it shouldn't impact our decision), graveyard-hate (when Will-ing) and creature-removal (when Maniac-ing). Of the latter two, creature removal is more commonly played in maindecks than graveyard-hate (at least, that's my general impression here).
- In case something DOES go wrong, like them having Mental Misstep for your Ancestral Recall or something like that, having Yawg. Will in your pile will allow you to try again later (often the very next turn).
- Aside from Extirpate and Faerie Macabre, which only see a limited amount of play, graveyard hate will generally be permanent-based (meaning you can play around it) or susceptible to our own countermagic. Abrupt Decay sees more (certainly maindeck) play than either of those.

So, to summarize my reasoning:
- Either line exposes us to countermagic;
- Avoiding use of the graveyard will often imply killing through Laboratoy Maniac;
- There will generally be more opportunities for our opponents to interact with Gray Ogre than with our Graveyard;
- Including Yawgmoth's Will your piles offers a backup plan in case something goes awry;
- Abrupt Decay is harder to interact with than most of the commonly played (instant speed) graveyard-hosers.

Very interested in other people's thoughts on this.

Thanks for reading,

Tom

[dark ritual]

absolutley agree with tom.
maniac piles are much easier to disrupt.
i use them if i would lose to a missstep or steel sabotage (and have one blue up) or in games i am not sure to resolve my drawspell to attak the dd pile (happens only if i have to).
in scenarios, where i lose to missstep i can often include a own missstep in maniac piles but not in tendrils piles, because tendrils piles often need two mana generators, will, tendrils and a drawspell.
tendrils is my first option against an unknown hand if my opp. has mana up.

tom:
do you test extirpate?
i won so many games in the last two tournaments because of it and with 4 discard its even more powerfull?
how was the testing against mud?

[NiRVeS]

I was piloting the MUD deck during our latest session. My teammate (Bart) wanted to test a list with Dack Fayden, specifically to see how it fared against MUD.
I played Mikael Johanssons' maindeck (7th place at BoM9: http://www.bazaar-of-moxen.com/en/bazaar-of-moxen-coverage-bom9,24/bom9-vintage-main-event,c152.html), since I considered it the strongest build vs combo.

Dack Fayden looked promising, even though it really needs support from the sideboard in the form of Ancient Grudge/Chewers, since MUD can otherwise to easily answer it through Phyrexian Revoker. Our impression was that the card itself was good, but that Doomsday is likely not the right shell for it. I would certainly consider it for Grixis Superfriends, Tezzeret or some sort yet-to-be-build Welder-concocion (neo-Slaver, so to speak). The ultimate is worthless, but just getting to steal one thing is often gamewinning, and once you pressure a second minus-activation, which is soon, thing steadily get dire for them.
That being said: 3 mana is a lot to ask against MUD, and openings which would allow a fast Dack Fayden would often be just as strong, if not stronger, if they had included Trygon Predator instead.
All in all, the presence of Dack Fayden in the maindeck didn't have enough impact to seriously change the matchup. MUD remains heavily favored pre-board, as was to be expected. And, at least in my opinion, the sideboard package of chewers/grudges + maindeck Dack, didn't significantly overperform when compared to other packages, like mana/trygon/sabotage (which is just the one we're used to playing.

We will probably be testing Doomsday, MUD and Jace Control this week, but when I get back to piloting Doomsday myself against BUG and other controldecks, I'll try and fit an exptirpate or 2 in the board.

[Smmenen]

Suggestion for testing:

If you test Doomsday versus MUD, allow MUD to be on the play every game.

When I broke this deck out in late 2011, I made the mistake of alternating who played first in my testing, which gave me the illusion that I had a better Workshop matchup than I really did.  In testing, I was about 50% against Workshops.  Yet, I was crushed in the top 8 of the Waterbury after I lost the die roll by the only Workshop deck in the Top 8.

The problem is that a 20 (or however large) game set with each player going first 10 games does not even remotely represent what happens if you have to play 2 of 3 games on the draw.  

You are going to win many games on the play, but that won't tell you what your chances are if you don't win the die roll.  

That's why I strongly recommend testing against Workshops being on the draw every game.  That will, ultimately, understate your win percentage, but it will give you valuable information about what your chances are if you lose the die roll, and realistically prepare you for what you need to win those games.  

This is especially true if, as you believe, the deck is not favored pre-board.  That means your goal should be winning Game 3.  Winning game 2 means nothing if you can't win a game 3 on the draw.  The tools to win game 3 will win game 2, but if you can't win on the draw, you can't win the match.

[Samoht]

This is especially true if, as you believe, the deck is not favored pre-board.  That means your goal should be winning Game 3.  Winning game 2 means nothing if you can't win a game 3 on the draw.  The tools to win game 3 will win game 2, but if you can't win on the draw, you can't win the match.

This couldn't be more true. I've found the exact same thing to be important for any deck that is trying to fix their Shop MU.

[NiRVeS]

Thanks for the advice. Most of us (our team) has been playing competititve Legacy/Vintage for long enough to know how to (critically) evaluate our testing results, so I think we're pretty good at avoiding some typical pitfalls. We do in fact alternate play/draw when testing matchups. But, especially in MUD's case, we're well aware that we should make a sharp distinction between games on the play vs games on the draw.

I would like to add that being otp vs otd can make a large difference in the type of opening hands Doomsday gets to keep. Our general approach is to play "unbiased" games pre-board, meaning mulligans decisions are weighed against an "unknown" opponent.

[Smmenen]

Thanks for the advice. Most of us (our team) has been playing competititve Legacy/Vintage for long enough to know how to (critically) evaluate our testing results, so I think we're pretty good at avoiding some typical pitfalls. We do in fact alternate play/draw when testing matchups.

I'm actually suggesting that you not do that, even if you are able to perceive the difference, being on the play against MUD has little preparatory value, and can unconsciously bias your perception of the matchup. 

[xouman]

I just sleeved Doomsday once, but I usually fit a duress/tgz in the doomsday pile, so any misstep/decay can be dealt. The problem is that often I lack the mana to play ancestral AND duress, and spoiled lots of piles. How should piles with a duress done? I understand that it's pretty different depending on the card drawer in hand and the mana available.

Some people would say that it's not advisable to play doomsday without previous duress/tgz, but there are 4 doomsday and I felt pretty confortable having one countered, since it was not hard to get another.

[Tobi]

Some people would say that it's not advisable to play doomsday without previous duress/tgz, but there are 4 doomsday and I felt pretty confortable having one countered, since it was not hard to get another.

Smart players will not counter your DD, but the follow-up draw spell, possibly leaving you with 1-2 draw-go's until you can try to win. Inserting additional counter/Duress into your DD pile helps getting around solutions for your win-condition (Flusterstorm for Tendrils, Bounce for Maniac, GY-hate for Will, etc).

[NiRVeS]

I'm actually suggesting that you not do that, even if you are able to perceive the difference, being on the play against MUD has little preparatory value, and can unconsciously bias your perception of the matchup.

I got your suggestion, my message implied that your remark with regards to our testing process was in fact valid. The point I was trying to make is that we are conscious of how it might skew our preception, and how I believe that we are sufficiently aware in order the assess our results with the necessary crutiny.

Xouman: as Tobi noted, the biggest risk when they have countermagic, is Doomsday resolving and them being able to disrupt your actual kill mechanism.
Most basic piles with Duress require either 2 more mana (in which case you can simply replace petal with duress) or having 3 lands in play + a landdrop (or just 4 lands) in order to save mana on your drawspell (because you can Gush twice). I could list some piles for you, if you like, although I'd need to think them through just like you would - I don't actually have any piles memorized, I've just come to recognize the conditions under which the deck can go off, and build my piles on the spot from there during tournament play.

[Smmenen]

I'm actually suggesting that you not do that, even if you are able to perceive the difference, being on the play against MUD has little preparatory value, and can unconsciously bias your perception of the matchup.

I got your suggestion, my message implied that your remark with regards to our testing process was in fact valid. The point I was trying to make is that we are conscious of how it might skew our preception, and how I believe that we are sufficiently aware in order the assess our results with the necessary crutiny.

I have no doubt that your testing is conducted with a critical mind and represents the matchup well in terms of %ages over long sets, but I think I am offering a more critical observation about how to test against Workshops generally, and how long set testing, alternating on the play, is actually deeply misleading, no matter how well informed or critically minded the testers are.

Let me try to make this point from another angle.   Bear with me.

Suppose, hypothetically, that you win 100% of the games on the play, and lose 100% of the games on the draw.  If you played a 100 game set, you would discover that the matchup is 50-50.  Translating this into a best 2-of-3, you would win exactly 50% of your matches as well, which would be determined entirely by the coin flip.  Every time you lost the die roll, you lost the match, and vice versa. 

The problem is this: for decks that are weak in game 1 to Workshops, it doesn't really matter if you win the die roll or not.  Your game plan hinges largely on winning games 2 and 3.  That being the case, you MUST win game 3 on the draw to win the match. 

It follows then that  all of your testing should be focused on winning game 3.  If you can win game 3 with a particular sideboard plan, you will be winning game 2, so there is no point in testing on the play.  If you can't win game 3, you can't win the match, so there is no point in playing game 2.  In other words, there is zero value in playing post-board on the play. 

Consider this from another perspective.  Suppose the same win ratios, but that you play a series of best of three matches, in which your opponent is on the play 2 of 3 games, and you are on the play 1 of 3 games.  
 
You might come away thinking that you have a 33% chance in the matchup.  This would be deeply misleading and actually overstates your chances of winning.  You actually have a 0% chance in the matchup because games are the wrong metric.   It's *matches* that matter in tournament magic.  And, in this case, the matchup is decided by the games on the draw.  

This is where testing -- even among very smart and experienced players - can go wrong.  

What I'm saying is that no matter how critical or well intentioned, a testing process against Workshops that alternatives who is on the play and on the draw for any deck that is notably disadvantaged in Game 1 is fatally flawed and cannot be rescued even by intellegence or experience.  

[Soly]

I'd like to throw in that I have *never* lost a game after casting Doomsday.  I have also *never* not had at least near-perfect information when I'm in a Doomsday stack.  Either I've duressed/thoughtseized them, Gitaxian Probed them, or have a Force + Flusterstorm etc for whatever they're playing.  I think I play much more conservatively with my counterspells though, which usually gives me much more protection post-doomsday.

[MTGFan]

I'm actually suggesting that you not do that, even if you are able to perceive the difference, being on the play against MUD has little preparatory value, and can unconsciously bias your perception of the matchup.

I got your suggestion, my message implied that your remark with regards to our testing process was in fact valid. The point I was trying to make is that we are conscious of how it might skew our preception, and how I believe that we are sufficiently aware in order the assess our results with the necessary crutiny.

I have no doubt that your testing is conducted with a critical mind and represents the matchup well in terms of %ages over long sets, but I think I am offering a more critical observation about how to test against Workshops generally, and how long set testing, alternating on the play, is actually deeply misleading, no matter how well informed or critically minded the testers are.

Let me try to make this point from another angle.   Bear with me.

Suppose, hypothetically, that you win 100% of the games on the play, and lose 100% of the games on the draw.  If you played a 100 game set, you would discover that the matchup is 50-50.  Translating this into a best 2-of-3, you would win exactly 50% of your matches as well, which would be determined entirely by the coin flip.  Every time you lost the die roll, you lost the match, and vice versa. 

The problem is this: for decks that are weak in game 1 to Workshops, it doesn't really matter if you win the die roll or not.  Your game plan hinges largely on winning games 2 and 3.  That being the case, you MUST win game 3 on the draw to win the match. 

It follows then that  all of your testing should be focused on winning game 3.  If you can win game 3 with a particular sideboard plan, you will be winning game 2, so there is no point in testing on the play.  If you can't win game 3, you can't win the match, so there is no point in playing game 2.  In other words, there is zero value in playing post-board on the play. 

Consider this from another perspective.  Suppose the same win ratios, but that you play a series of best of three matches, in which your opponent is on the play 2 of 3 games, and you are on the play 1 of 3 games.  
 
You might come away thinking that you have a 33% chance in the matchup.  This would be deeply misleading and actually overstates your chances of winning.  You actually have a 0% chance in the matchup because games are the wrong metric.   It's *matches* that matter in tournament magic.  And, in this case, the matchup is decided by the games on the draw.  

This is where testing -- even among very smart and experienced players - can go wrong.  

What I'm saying is that no matter how critical or well intentioned, a testing process against Workshops that alternatives who is on the play and on the draw for any deck that is notably disadvantaged in Game 1 is fatally flawed and cannot be rescued even by intellegence or experience.  

What you're you saying is that conscientious players are simply not capable of holding the notion in their head that the die roll will skew their testing results for a single sample of tested matches?

To eschew G1 on-the-play testing means to throw out valuable test results that can only be gleaned from that situation. I feel as if this is bad advice, because to assume the inability of a tester to be consciously aware of the randomness of on-the-play selection represents a limiting mindset.

To definitively state that a testing method "cannot be rescued even by intellegence (sic) or experience" is a bold and probably fundamentally unprovable claim.

[Smmenen]

Without delving into all of the cognitive biases that exist and the ways in which we process information in a biased manner, there is no value and potential harm in testing on the play post-board for decks with weak/poor games 1s.  Obviously, the importance of Game 3 is relative to the strength of game 1.   For decks with weak game 1s, winning game 3 is paramount, so there is no value in testing games 2.   It's a complete waste of time or worse, it may give you a better view of your matchup in a tournament match than exists.  

EDIT: long form testing does not accurately represent the structure of a tournament match, and Workshop decks amplify this difference.  Alternating on the play or draw is a bad testing form because it doesn't correlate to actual tournament matches, and sbing plans should and will often change depending on who is on the play.  

I feel as if this is bad advice, because to assume the inability of a tester to be consciously aware of the randomness of on-the-play selection represents a limiting mindset.

It's not random though.  For decks with bad game 1 win percentages, you will likely play a game 3 regardless of who wins the die roll.   Being the play or draw is therefore not random.  So you need to win game 3 on the draw to win the match.  Even if it were random, I would still recommend it because you need to be able to beat Workshops on the draw if you lose the die roll in a Top 8 match to win the tournament.  

It's the old adage: Focus on what's important.  What's important is winning a match.  In order to win the match, you will need to win a post-board game on the draw.  That being the case, I wouldn't spend a minute testing post-board on the play for a deck like this.  

[den_rudy]

@ dark ritual

Tested yesterday your list together with Nirves.
Will summarize shortly my thoughts
Nights whisper and library were both really good. And I’m really looking to fit them into our current decklist.
Don’t know if the 4 ritual playstyle suits me that good, cause a few games I lost because I had to much rituals and to less disruption. But other games I won because of the extra rituals and a naturally drawn tendrils or demonic tutor….
So maybe i will change number of rituals depending on expected metagame

About your maindeck: I would switch the duress for a thoughtseize, snapcaster/deathrite/confidant are more played than misdirection and that would be the only reason to play duress.
I can see why you would play chain of vapor (for storm generator and catch all I guess) but I still prefer the hurkey’s recall. Because chain isn’t that stellar against workshop.

Post side against workshop
The snuf outs worked rather well. Don’t know If you want the full 4 in your deck (drawing them in multiples against full sphere hand suck). But they indeed allowed you to draw your hurkey’s and stretch the game till you can drop a predator/win with doomsday.
I don’t know if you can afford a “full” workshop side. Because I still think that 2 slots are to less against ichorid. You don’t have all the time a turn 2 game winning hand. And with the therapy’s they are capable in stripping your whole hand.

[dark ritual]

@ den-rudy

that´s funny, because i tested nirves list yesterday.
i like the information you get with all the discard and it plays out very well against non wasteland decks. But if the opp. has waste i get screwed very often. Also, i drew hands that include only conditional disruption and lands... and lost to single creatures like snapcaster and bobs.

About chain: Chain can get rid of any permanent (oath, golem, sphere, spirit of the labyrint, true beliver, null rod,...). I tested hurkyl´s but i think it wins you 1 out of 7-8 game ones against mud and is pretty dead against the rest of the field.

Duress vs. thoughtsize: I would love to play thoughtsize but: the most common use in my list for discard is the inclusion in the dd pile and the lifeloss is more times than not deadly.

Ichorid: The two extirpates are not there because of dredge (sure, they come in for duress and loa). Against dredge i mull to an early dd (even a pass the turn) and go for the maniac pile with missstep in it.
Extirpate is there for big blue and fish. Extirpate on Force, flusterstorm, trap, shaman or wasteland is game most of the time. In the last turnament i won a game i was looking at a hand of 2 Force, 2 Snapcaster and a graveyard with 4 Accumulated knowledge. I extirpated the accus end of turn and the forces two turns later to cleare the way to victory and probably lost with every other comination of cards.

[WhiteLotus]

Aside from the win percentage biased perception thing, if you tested and were able to "reliably" beat workshops while always playing on the draw, winning when you will be on the play is going to be much easier. The higher you set the difficulty, the more you learn and the better prepared you are likely to be. So while you may argue that as a good player you are able to distinguish your win ratio from being on the draw and on the play, it will be a much better use of your time to test like Steve suggests.
It's also much better to think you have a 35-40% win ratio when you in fact have a 50-60 % win ratio then the other way around, you will try that much harder to win.

[NiRVeS]

If testing matchups was all about figuring out strategies and percentages, you would be right.

If all we wanted from our testing was a perfect understanding on how Doomsday's sideboard-plan operates versus MUD, you would be right.

But that's not the case. Testing is also about building the player's skillsets. Since you all seem very much aware of how different the blue combo vs MUD matchups play out on the draw and on the play, it would seem only logical to also play games on the play, in order to gain knowledge and experience in those scenario's as well. It's not as if in those games the MUD player just straight up conceeds. Especially when it comes to mulligan-decisions, which are vastly different on the play (where you mainly need to evaluate your manadevelopment in the early turns) than on the draw (where it's more about the amount of defense you can muster).

You also completely ignore the MUD player. I'm not that experienced with MUD, so getting to play some games in different situations is also valuable for me. Even if I never play MUD in tournament play, it still helps me understand the matchup better for when I'm playing Doomsday again - it's common knowledge that it pays off to have at least some experience being the "bad guy" too. Letting MUD (i.e. me) be on the play the whole time might also skew my own perspective.

There's also an argument for things be more fun when you alternate play/draw during testing, but I'm assuming that should be a non-factor when deciding on testing methods. However, having fun correlates with playing better too, so it might not be completely irrelevant either.

All in all, Steven, your reasoning is valid. But, it is also horribly narrow-minded. "Focusing on what's important" should not lead to tunnel vision.

[AmbivalentDuck]

I started a new thread based on Deathrite > Dark Ritual: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=46390.msg644390

Not much changes except that there's a strong incentive to go BUg and to have some amount of man plan for backup since you can often Deathrite an opponent to death.

[emidln]

4-0'd a daily and split (3-0, concede to split packs) a couple times with this list:

// Doomsday by dmotf

4 Doomsday
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll

1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Tendrils of Agony

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
4 Gush
4 Preordain
1 Ponder
1 Gitaxian Probe

4 Force of Will
4 Flusterstorm
3 Mental Misstep
1 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
1 Hurkyl's Recall

1 Black Lotus
1 Fastbond
2 Dark Ritual
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet

2 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
2 Island

SB: 3 Hurkyl's Recall
SB: 3 Teferi's Realm
SB: 1 Island
SB: 1 Mox Emerald
SB: 1 Sol Ring
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 1 Yixlid Jailer
SB: 1 Extirpate

Sideboarding has been:

vs Workshops:

-4 Flusterstorm
-3 Mental Misstep
-1 Duress
-1 Thoughtseize

+3 Hurkyl's Recall
+3 Teferi's Realm
+1 Island
+1 Mox Emerald
+1 Sol Ring

vs Blue Decks

-1 Hurkyl's Recall

+1 Extirpate

vs Dredge

-1 Thoughtseize
-1 Duress
-4 Flusterstorm
-1 Hurkyl's Recall

+4 Leyline of the Void
+1 Yixlid Jailer
+1 Extirpate
+1 Mox Emerald

Some notes:

I've been looking for Fastbond/Gush piles more frequently resulting in better protected kills. I don't think I'm still doing this enough, but as I do it more, I'm getting rewarded.

There are a lot of lands maindeck, (22 total manasources!!) but this isn't a bad thing. Access to Hurkyl's Recall isn't nearly as important as mana to play the Hurkyl's Recall. I'm certain that the 15th land over a 2nd Hurkyl's Recall is correct, since with more lands I can also cast things like tutors and Doomsday more often around Spheres/Chalices.

I'm not entirely sold on the second Dark Ritual (it might eventually become Hurkyl's Recall), but I haven't played enough games on the draw against workshops to tell yet. It's also possible that maybe I should be playing 22 mana sources, 2 h.recall maindeck and the cut lies somewhere else. The fewer Rituals you play, the more of a Gushbond deck this becomes (out of necessity).

Gitaxian Probe often allows me to win games where I'd otherwise need to burn/resolve Yawgmoth's Will from a Doomsday pile (which isn't always possible).

[mmcgeach]

I've been running the 4-ritual build from a few pages back and really like it (with the night's whisper and necropotence et al).  I really like how it can storm out with a few rituals and a tutor w/o bothering with doomsday.  It gives the deck two different combo angles which can be difficult to simultaneously stop.  Also night's whisper is pretty strong.  Anyway, the weakness is the shops match, for sure.

How has teferi's realm been for you?