"Simians Mom" aka RW Death and Taxes

[desolutionist]

Josh is the creator of the deck, and I know that he hasn't even tried Hammer Mage.  I've tried it for budget reasons (on MTGO) and I've also tried a few other things that I know Josh hasn't.  It really depends on your priorities; Josh and I both have had success with the deck but this archetype hasn't been fully explored.  I'd recommend testing as much as you can against the different variants of Shops, Oath, Mentor, Delver, and Dredge and seeing what you come up with.  It's a very grindy deck: you're going to see what your opponent has and you're going to have to fight through it.

[oshkoshhaitsyosh]

OK so a few things here...

Serenity: card is great but I haven't needed it to beat shops. And if you're using this card, that means spirit of the lab is bad. I actually like spirit vs shops in a way because it trades with golem and I can hold my swords/relic warden for bigger problems. So I'd advise against this card

Shaving a swords and a priest: this doesn't seem like a good idea. Why? Because ask yourself what this deck loses to without those cards? Oath/dredge/bigbig creatures...so the biggest beatings for this deck are those. And shaving them only makes things worse. Swords are there for big dudes and shops. Containment priest also can surprise a forge master once activated forcing them to go a different route after they sacked 3 cards hoping to get some big creature. And the flash blocker is relevant. Oh and the interaction of relic warder with priest in play vs shops. Even if they kill warder, they don't get bot back.

4th thalia: I've tested and tested and tested this until the cows came home and always fell back in 3. The deck already punishes blue tight play honestly. The last thing you want to do is have multiple thalia stranded in your hand. And furthermore this deck relies less on mana denial and more on creature control. While thalia is control, she's not a 4 of here IMO...

CONCLUSION: This is a meta game deck and you can build it to focus on whatever you choose. But that is the challenge. I am a long time blue player and have a good grasp on the format. Which is why I have had success with such a deck. I'm almost playing behind enemy lines. Have fun and happy testing

[BalduvianBears]

Serenity: card is great but I haven't needed it to beat shops. And if you're using this card, that means spirit of the lab is bad. I actually like spirit vs shops in a way because it trades with golem and I can hold my swords/relic warden for bigger problems. So I'd advise against this card

Totally agree here.  I've found that they've been reluctant to attack with Lodestones when there's a 3/1 on the other side of the table unless they got a SoFI on it or some other type of buffer.

Shaving a swords and a priest: this doesn't seem like a good idea. Why? Because ask yourself what this deck loses to without those cards? Oath/dredge/bigbig creatures...so the biggest beatings for this deck are those. And shaving them only makes things worse. Swords are there for big dudes and shops. Containment priest also can surprise a forge master once activated forcing them to go a different route after they sacked 3 cards hoping to get some big creature. And the flash blocker is relevant. Oh and the interaction of relic warder with priest in play vs shops. Even if they kill warder, they don't get bot back.

After proxying up Dredge and playing some games against that, I def understand now the importance of that particular card in that MU.  Spirit seems OK in the sense that it curbs the amount they can abuse Bazaar, but Containment Priest REALLY slows them up.  At first, I had a hard time understanding 4x Cage b/c I was thinking about Oath packing 3 or so Mental Misstep but now understand the importance of a T1 Cage/Priest.  Like T2 is too late, I get that I really need it T1.  So thank you Josh for keeping me in check there.

4th thalia: I've tested and tested and tested this until the cows came home and always fell back in 3. The deck already punishes blue tight play honestly. The last thing you want to do is have multiple thalia stranded in your hand. And furthermore this deck relies less on mana denial and more on creature control. While thalia is control, she's not a 4 of here IMO...

This one I'm still having a hard time seeing eye to eye with you on.  I can def see how the taxing effect of Thalia is not as good in Vintage as compared to Legacy when you have Moxen in the format to accelerate the mana while not having access to Port, another mana-taxing card in the Legacy version of D&T.

What I like about Thalia, however, is that you do slow them up a little bit in the early to the point where you can drop enough dudes to overwhelm your opponent.  And while the interaction doesn't come up all the time, I really do like getting Jitte counters on it 1st and using them before combat damage.  Also, I do like having a 2/1 first striker to ward off zombie tokens from Bridge (as opposed to trading or waiting for Mom) while taxing them if they want to generate more zombies by trying to cast Therapies.  Nonetheless, I'll work with the 4th copy in the board until I can live with cutting it.

As for Swords, I have a hard time seeing the effectiveness of the card when you have Chalices and Mental Misstep running around. At least with Chalice, you can remove it with Relic-Warder and/or Hammer Mage, but I may very well change my mind since I haven't played against Martello Shops yet (next in the gauntlet).

CONCLUSION: This is a meta game deck and you can build it to focus on whatever you choose. But that is the challenge. I am a long time blue player and have a good grasp on the format. Which is why I have had success with such a deck. I'm almost playing behind enemy lines. Have fun and happy testing

Which is why I really appreciate you, Desolutionist, and the other folks on the thread for giving me such a good sounding board as I'm exploring the archetype and format going into Champs.   

Can't believe it's already 2 weeks from now!

Hope everyone's had a great weekend!

- Celso

Current Mainboard
4x Containment Priest
2x Hammer Mage
4x Leonin Relic-Warder
3x Mother of Runes
3x Phyrexian Revoker
3x Prophetic Flamespeaker
4x Spirit of the Labyrinth
3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

3x Sudden Shock
3x Swords to Plowshares
1x Umezawa's Jitte

1x Lotus Petal
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Cavern of Souls
3x Plateau
2x Plains
1x Mountain
1x Keldon Megaliths
4x Arid Mesa
2x Flooded Strand
1x Scalding Tarn
3x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine


Sideboard
4x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Grim Lavamancer
4x Ingot Chewer
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Sudden Shock
1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1x Wasteland

[Stormanimagus]

How is this deck supposed to deal with fast moxen from big blue without chalice or stony? I mean, the deck looks really strong otherwise but this seems like a glaring weakness?

-Storm

[TheWhiteDragon]

How is this deck supposed to deal with fast moxen from big blue without chalice or stony? I mean, the deck looks really strong otherwise but this seems like a glaring weakness?

-Storm

hammer mage...just survive the first couple turns with thalia, plow, etc.  There's also revoker/relic-warden on moxen.  Things like spirit and priest also mean their big mana hand can do less broken things.

[Stormanimagus]

How is this deck supposed to deal with fast moxen from big blue without chalice or stony? I mean, the deck looks really strong otherwise but this seems like a glaring weakness?

-Storm

hammer mage...just survive the first couple turns with thalia, plow, etc.  There's also revoker/relic-warden on moxen.  Things like spirit and priest also mean their big mana hand can do less broken things.

Dig through time would like to have words with this comment. If I thought cards as slow as hammer Mage or 1-for-1's like Relic Warder had a chance in hell of stopping the mana from TPS or Gifts or even Mentor from arriving I would have mentioned it. Stuff that doesn't preemptively stop the mana isn't worth much because players will often sandbag moxen before using it on the critical turn (one of the reasons Hammer Mage doesn't do much vs. fast mana).

[BalduvianBears]

How is this deck supposed to deal with fast moxen from big blue without chalice or stony? I mean, the deck looks really strong otherwise but this seems like a glaring weakness?

-Storm

To Josh's point (@oshkoshhaitsyosh), it's a metagame deck.  So if you wanted to hedge against ritual-based combo decks, you can pack something like Ethersworn Canonist in your 75 somewhere.

[oshkoshhaitsyosh]

How is this deck supposed to deal with fast moxen from big blue without chalice or stony? I mean, the deck looks really strong otherwise but this seems like a glaring weakness?

-Storm

Those decks are few and far between in the current vintage landscape. And a deck like often has routes of victory that we can turn off without mana denial. At one point I was sideboarding stony silence but not in the current meta game

[BalduvianBears]

Current Mainboard
4x Containment Priest
2x Hammer Mage
4x Leonin Relic-Warder
3x Mother of Runes
3x Phyrexian Revoker
3x Prophetic Flamespeaker
4x Spirit of the Labyrinth
3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

3x Sudden Shock
3x Swords to Plowshares
1x Umezawa's Jitte

1x Lotus Petal
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Cavern of Souls
3x Plateau
2x Plains
1x Mountain
1x Keldon Megaliths
4x Arid Mesa
2x Flooded Strand
1x Scalding Tarn
3x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine


Sideboard
4x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Grim Lavamancer
4x Ingot Chewer
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Sudden Shock
1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1x Wasteland

Got to proxy up both Martello Shops and UR Delver (the 3rd and 12th place lists from the last NYSE Open, if I recall correctly), and learned some interesting stuff that I'm sure a lot of you already know but in case someone else is looking at this thread brand new:

• While I really like Hammer Mage against Frobots, I realized quickly how less effective he is against Martello because of the larger dudes that deck spits out.  And since this version seems to be the most popular version of shops, I put the 2nd Hammer Mage in the sideboard.
• Similarly, since they have larger dudes, I got to understand how important Swords to Plowshares is in the matchup to help deal with Forgemasters, Lodestone, and other giant robots.  With Chalice on 1, I can at least deal with it maindeck between the Relic-Warders and Hammer Mage and then add onto the hate w/ Ingot Chewers.  While I still don't feel so comfy about the card when Mental Misstep is flying around, I have to accept and believe that I'll get them every so often when they don't have MM in hand (to be fair, it's not like we give them many MM targets in the deck to begin with, so it inevitably becomes a hard counter to StP).
• I don't know how the rest of you have been doing with land/moxen count, but I've been struggling to keep openers on 22 land + Lotus Petal.  So I increased the land count to 23 and had considerably less issues.  I've also added a 3rd Wasteland to the maindeck because of how much it slows up shops and dredge when you nuke their Workshop/Bazaar.  I get that it doesn't hurt Dredge as much if they have access to Petrified Field but gives you some time to land a hoser.
• Got to experience how much more insane Young Pyromancer is in Vintage when you can draw gas like Ancestral and Treasure Cruise.  To hedge a little against Pyromancer/Mentor decks, I'm trying out 2 Megaliths in the maindeck with access to a Lavamancer post board.  Against Delver, I've found my graveyard to be big enough to abuse Lavamancer but not large enough against Mentor (they can also blow you out with the prowess trigger -- Sudden Shock seems to be a much better to that).

Current Mainboard
4x Containment Priest
1x Hammer Mage
4x Leonin Relic-Warder
3x Mother of Runes
3x Phyrexian Revoker
3x Prophetic Flamespeaker
4x Spirit of the Labyrinth
3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

3x Sudden Shock
4x Swords to Plowshares
1x Umezawa's Jitte

4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Cavern of Souls
3x Plateau
2x Plains
1x Mountain
2x Keldon Megaliths
4x Arid Mesa
3x Flooded Strand
3x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine


Sideboard
4x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Grim Lavamancer
4x Ingot Chewer
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Sudden Shock
1x Hammer Mage
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1x Wasteland
[/quote]

[oshkoshhaitsyosh]

27 mana sources (including ssg) is a minimum for the main deck. I've never played less!

[Will]

How is this deck supposed to deal with fast moxen from big blue without chalice or stony? I mean, the deck looks really strong otherwise but this seems like a glaring weakness?

-Storm

Those decks are few and far between in the current vintage landscape. And a deck like often has routes of victory that we can turn off without mana denial. At one point I was sideboarding stony silence but not in the current meta game

By my count, there were 41 Blue decks running fast mana including Combo, Oath, Bomberman and Grixis of the 141 at the NYSE Open. My number may be off by a few because I just went off the metagame breakdown, but this is probably worth mentioning regardless. It's also yet to be seen how that will translate to Eternal Weekend.

[BalduvianBears]

[...]And a deck like often has routes of victory that we can turn off without mana denial. At one point I was sideboarding stony silence but not in the current meta game

By my count, there were 41 Blue decks running fast mana including Combo, Oath, Bomberman and Grixis of the 141 at the NYSE Open. My number may be off by a few because I just went off the metagame breakdown, but this is probably worth mentioning regardless. It's also yet to be seen how that will translate to Eternal Weekend.

I think Josh was referring to the fact that we can answer the key cards with fast mana of our own between SSG, Lotus, and our 2 moxen.  For instance, let's say Oath plays a T1 Oath.  We can fight back w/ Cavern on "Cleric" or "Human" + SSG/Lotus/Mox and cast an uncounterable Containment Priest or Leonin Relic-Warder (if we get WW).  That's not to say that we can beat every fast mana combo deck, but there's a lot of 2-mana plays we can make to deal with the real business the combo deck is bringing; not so much focusing on the Moxen themselves.

[Bluediamonds]

I think the consideration when the answer is a reactive one versus being a proactive one

More common plays below

Thalia and spheres are pro-active
Stony Silence is pro-active
Chalice is pro-active
Spirit of the Labyrinth is pro-active
Containment is somewhere in between

Relic Warder is reactive
Revoker is mostly reactive

Without the proactive plays, you cant really fight back a big blue fast mana turn where they hit 2 land drops play a planeswalker and draw 4 cards etc.
U can however stop that with the proactive plays.

I favor having as many pro-active plays as possible and the choice will be dependent on the meta expected

[oshkoshhaitsyosh]

[...]And a deck like often has routes of victory that we can turn off without mana denial. At one point I was sideboarding stony silence but not in the current meta game

By my count, there were 41 Blue decks running fast mana including Combo, Oath, Bomberman and Grixis of the 141 at the NYSE Open. My number may be off by a few because I just went off the metagame breakdown, but this is probably worth mentioning regardless. It's also yet to be seen how that will translate to Eternal Weekend.

I think Josh was referring to the fact that we can answer the key cards with fast mana of our own between SSG, Lotus, and our 2 moxen.  For instance, let's say Oath plays a T1 Oath.  We can fight back w/ Cavern on "Cleric" or "Human" + SSG/Lotus/Mox and cast an uncounterable Containment Priest or Leonin Relic-Warder (if we get WW).  That's not to say that we can beat every fast mana combo deck, but there's a lot of 2-mana plays we can make to deal with the real business the combo deck is bringing; not so much focusing on the Moxen themselves.

This is exactly what I meant. Just because we're not shutting off someone sandbagging moxen, we're likely shutting off their avenues of victory via hate bears. This deck is less reliant on mana denial then most hate bear decks. I'd say this deck is just controlling the game without much mana denial.

[RecklessEmbermage]

While I really like Hammer Mage against Frobots, I realized quickly how less effective he is against Martello because of the larger dudes that deck spits out.  And since this version seems to be the most popular version of shops, I put the 2nd Hammer Mage in the sideboard.

Could you please elaborate on the choice over both hammer mage and relic warder over Kataki? Particularly in an unpowered list with spirit guides, Kataki just stands out to me like a cleaner, more efficient maindeck card than hammer mage. It is only really effective together with a strong mana denial package, but you´ve got that covered. When artifact hate is weak (say against blue-red delver) Kataki at least puts a bit of pressure on the manabase, deals 2 and is easy to cast.

If Leonin Relic Warder had a relevant creature type, I would play it over Kataki. Even though Kataki has an easy manacost, it´s gravy that you can reasonably set your second cavern to spirit.

And: I would never leave home without the fourth wasteland in the main.

[WhiteLotus]

What about Chalice of the Void? Card is nuts in any deck that isn't affected by it, and it has some applicability in every single Matchup.
Much more relevant and versatile than Stony Silence.

[nedleeds]

I think you could argue that Chalice loses a little utility past the first few turns, and that Chalice 1 hampers your own efforts. Chalice and Cavern have nice synergy but I don't think either is absolutely better. Stony Silence is mana denial, as well as a cross cutting tool that keeps you safe from Vault/Key/KFM. In the dream world where you have the play and exactly 1 chalice, and never draw any more it's great but past then it may cut off something you are trying to do or some of your defensive cards.

[desolutionist]

Null Rod and Stony are both in the deck. I've played 2 main, 1 main/1 side, and zero. This deck is not a *good* deck, it's a metagame deck and depends on countering what your opponent is playing.  Null Rod or Jitte. Cage or X. And so there's obviously a time where you would want Kataki over Hammer Mage.  But I've found Hammer Mage to be really good against Steel City Vault; if you play it on turn 1, how is that slow? I mean all the blue mages are watering at the mouth over baby Jace, which operates at the same speed.

Maybe Gorilla Shaman would be better? It kills artifacts much slower than Hammer Mage though.

[Kaiser von Hugal]

What do you think about dropping the the 3 Flamespeakers and adding in 2 Stone Forge Mystics and a Gorilla Shaman?

[jmilia89]

wouldn't flamespeaker and equipment from stoneforge be amazing?

[msg67183]

wouldn't flamespeaker and equipment from stoneforge be amazing?

Josh has done this. It all depends on meta.