Dies to Removal

This is my usual playstyle so YMMV but I found controlling green instead of racing them was a far better plan. I think I dropped 2 games out of my 15 or so post board and one was because I was stuck on 3 lands and the other was due to MDU's nightmare of exiling all creature removal with flamespeaker on an empty board instead of hitting the other 51 cards in the deck.

I was doing this sideboard

[deck]Sideboard[/deck]

The core was -4 BC, 4 SC, 4 YP for everything but Chandra and Wear. I experimented with bringing in Chandra over a couple of shocks a few times but it never had an impact so a couple YP instead is probably best. There were times I wish I had a YP so I could get some advantage out of my removal and power up Stoke but 16 permanents is probably too much.

Purp,

I
kept the board clear enough that even if Disciple hit and wasn't hushed or killed and triggered 0 devotion, the 2-4 lifegain was completely unimportant. There were a couple games where by the time I went aggressive, he was in the high 20's in life total due to Disciple and Courser. Then a flamespeaker connect let me cast another flamespeaker and Hushwing. He scooped while he was still in the teens.

We're UW control vs aggro in this matchup.

It seems like YP$ would excel in this matchup due to their inability to remove him, and the fact they lack trample. An early hornet queen also seems like a bitch.

Hornet Queen is a one-of in green anyways.

I also want to point it varies from deck to deck but a lot of green devotion decks run a lot less land because of the mana dorks (I run 23), making it really hard to hard cast the beefy creatures or to monstrosity Polukranos for a billion without them. You should have won before that can even happen.

Hornet Queen is a one-of in green anyways.

I also want to point it varies from deck to deck but a lot of green devotion decks run a lot less land because of the mana dorks (I run 23), making it really hard to hard cast the beefy creatures or to monstrosity Polukranos for a billion without them.

Thanks for that buzzsaw, very helpful. I do however think the number of hornet queens will increase.

I need to start recording testing against high tier decks while on Cockatrice. Sometimes I can't hit the 8 PM daily or can't be on long enough for the full 4 matches.

Plus sometimes you get someone playing a high tier deck that wants to grind some test games against burn to really get a chance to experiment in one matchup.

I think I'd skip posting any of the Izzet artifact matchups though. That deck is so bad.

Purp,

Nylea let's them trample so it's not perfect but I agree that some number of YP is more correct. Not sure about the full 4 though because I didn't like seeing multiple in that matchup since controlling them is just so important. Racing them is hopeless.

My opponent never got a chance to cast hornet queen because I wouldn't let him ramp out and once I started to regularly cast Hushwing, he pulled it out. For some reason he wasn't in the market for playing a 2/2 for 7 . I didn't count my opponent's lands but I think Buzzsaw is right that if you kill their ramp, they're not getting their big spells out until obscenely late in the game. For example, I made Genesis Hydra embarrassingly bad for him since he usually had to cast it for less than 5 and routinely blank.

All this said, I should make sure I was playing against the standard devotion deck. It was one that ran Genesis Hydra, Elf/Satyr, no Carytid, BTE, 2 Garruk, some number of Nissa, Poly, Courser and a single hornet queen. Sideboard had some creature removal, 1 Arbor Colossus, Disciple, and some other things I can't remember. That sound about right?

Edit: I continue my fine tradition of editing a post I made 15 times. Whee.

I don't know what "Magic-League" is but that deck is a little different:
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=11941 - 21 (!) lands, 4 mystic/satry/carytid 2 queens, ... Mistcutter/Disciple/Sage/Ooze sideboard (seems unrefined).

EDIT M-L I guess is like Cockatrice ... you google something new every day!

EDIT EDIT And if you actually read the readme... M-L is like a cockatrice (or other app) wrapper, not a client itself. They carefully do not mention any clients.

Magic League is a way to run tournaments through cockatrice, typically this is cool because these are done weeks in advance of release of a set.

9th at the open (similar to todds list). I am sure decks will morph with card availability

[deck]

Creatures (29)

1 Arbor Colossus
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Genesis Hydra
1 Hornet Queen
1 Nylea's Disciple
1 Reclamation Sage
4 Voyaging Satyr
4 Courser of Kruphix
4 Polukranos, World Eater
1 Nylea, God of the Hunt

Planeswalkers (4)

2 Garruk, Caller of Beasts
2 Nissa, WorldWaker

Lands (24)

1 Darksteel Citadel
19 Forest
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

Spells (3)

3 Chord of Calling

Sideboard
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Soul of New Phyrexia
1 Arbor Colossus
4 Mistcutter Hydra
3 Nylea's Disciple
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Setessan Tactics
1 Time to Feed

[/deck]

The version Zenbitz posted looks awful. But, yeah, don't run flamespeaker against the Carytid version and keep YP in since they don't have the chance of BTE smashing you or ramping out that quick.

Purp,

The deck you listed is almost exactly what he played. Most of the games weren't even close.

Nissa wasn't a threat for me. Game 1, you usually charm her, kill the land, and you're so far ahead then it's not even funny. It's just worse game 2 and I think it eventually got boarded out.

Hushwing makes 11 of their best cards against us into overcosted bears, you have multiple ways to time walk a Poly activation, shock is incredibly live, and they have almost no interaction. My standard hand would beat his nut draw. I had to flood/mana screw for him to have a reasonable chance. The games went long but that's fine.

Man darksteel citadel + 2 nissa to make an indestructable 4/4 land seems very loose. Maybe it's some kind of control hedge for very long games?

Also, I killed Poly with Flamespeaker + 4 point burn plus have a chance to hit lands to ramp into end game quicker at least 5-6 times. That's not counting the times I just exiled it and swung into an empty board and drew two. Or he'd let it go through and give me a chance to hit one of my 11 removal spells? Never were the two on the field at the same time where I was intimidated by it.

Oddly, I never saw Arbor Collosus which I think means he didn't bring it in which is obviously a mistake.

Zenbitz,

Almost everything in the deck is only [mana]GG[/mana]. 19 sources is correct.

TL;DR version - don't prioritize the head. Burn the forest to the ground around it and then make the head eat the ashes.

19 green I think is fine... 21 lands seemed low even with 12 dorks. But I have never run a 12-dorker before. The 23/8 dorker "looks better".

Oh that one. I'm starting to learn that very few people test the decklists they put up in articles. Or they're tuned to beat metas composed of lunatics who never heard that UW control is better than Esper.

Also remember that this tourney is right before a PT so people are more incentivized to use the term as a testing grounds for decks they're maybe considering while not quite unleashing h4wt nU tek

Magic, where the fanbase accepts that writers post bad decklists for marginal gain.

Did testing last night with Z mana base, shouta list with stoke replacing Mizzium Mortar against mono black.

SB was

[deck]3 Flamespeaker
2 Chandra
2 Pillar
2 B-Light
1 Wear
3 Mizzium Mortars
2 Assemble[/deck]

The mono B list was running NVS instead of Lifebane. -4 Skull crack -4 BC I was not a fan of, them gaining life twice (whether is 2 gary, devour fleshing or pharikas cures is pretty hard to overcome). I struggled with deciding to use 8 or 11 cards post board.

Was typically doing something like: -1 Stoke -4 BC -2 Shock -1 Jet -2 WLH -1Skullcrack +3 Flame(not sure about this card in this
matchup, I have not tested it enough) +2 Pillar +2 Chandra +2 BL +2 Assemble

My opponent was doing something like: +3 Duress +2 Doom Blade +2 Cure

I think some of the problem is that you're strategically trying to do two things with this SB plan;
- race; and
- control

These roles are about as far apart as you can be. That's a problem because it creates enormous in inconsistency in your draws. If you're trying to out ca them, you don't care about them gaining life; I don't want to be paying mana to discard a card. Thing is, they run 26 land and no card draw or deck manipulation after board (if they follow Owen's SB approach); we run 23 land with 10 scry and ~7 ca engines. At some point something will stick and you'll start to get ahead. Or They'll flood out.

Trying to cover all bases with sideboarding really makes it hard to achieve this.

I don't want then to topdeck Pack Rat and I too deck Skullcrack, that would be a bad feels.

Thing is, you need to play SO MUCH
to understand this. Many "pros" don't. I'm lucky that I've played infinite mono blue control in pauper (MUC vs MBC in pauper is *almost* Burn vs MBC in standard) and you have to play hundreds of games to see what a difference the deck manipulation and small amount of draw make.

An excellent summary of what I've learned about sideboarding on 100 pages DTR and a good number of MTGO chats to fellow members: You need to be conscious and consistent of what role you want to play in every post-board game.

That said, I did notice that with all the additional removal we have been made available (aka Banishing Light, Reprisal, Fated and now Pillar of Light) over the course of the last sets, Burn has become more and more able to switch into a control/grind role post board, making use of our deck's card advantage and mana efficiency (Phoenix, YP, Mutavault plus whatever goodies we have in our sideboard). This may not suit some people's playstyles, but it does make the deck more
effective and less variance prone IMO.

Magic, where the fanbase accepts that writers post bad decklists for marginal gain.

cough traviswoo cough

Magic, where the fanbase accepts that writers post bad decklists for marginal gain.

cough traviswoo cough

#fuckthatguy

Do I actually miss anything not knowing who these people really are?

Hit 2 MBC in the daily back to back. Lost horribly with my flamespeaker plan, won decisively with Z's board out skullcrack plan. First opponent I lost two got dropped from the tournament match 2 for being AFK.

Are you running assemble in the board?

1 and only 1 reprisal too. I just bring in a couple more mortars. I still want some toil/trouble in my board as an edge against UW since it's my weakest matchup. I'll have the videos later. I had a assemble discarded but I never hit 5 lands until end game anyway. 2/2 assemble/reprisal is still best if you need your edge against black but I'm more confident in that match so I hedge against it less.

P.S. This is on mtgo so no m15 cards yet.

Hit 2 MBC in the daily back to back. Lost horribly with my flamespeaker plan, won decisively with Z's board out skullcrack plan. First opponent I lost two got dropped from the tournament match 2 for being AFK.

I'm crazy like a girl wearing fox ears

Jessicanigiriasfoxmcloud.jpeg

Jessicanigiriasfoxmcloud.jpeg

I...am...mildly worried about googling this.

I do like that changing vectors is so simple with the deck making it kind of hard to prepare for.

The shock/mortar plan actually helped a lot in the 3rd match too so I'll stick with that for a little until they do something odd.

How were you boarding previously, out of curiosity? How was your comparative experience without Skulkcrack?

You should definitely google jessica nigiri as Firefist ace

How were you boarding previously, out of curiosity? How was your comparative experience without Skulkcrack?

Previously, I was doing -1 mortar, -4 shock, -4 charm, 1 assemble, 1 reprisal, 3 speaker, 2 chandra, 2 banish.

I'm pretty sure my first match that I tried this, I misplayed embarrassingly bad but then I do this a lot regardless.

The problem is that plan only works out if they're using Lifebane because you can safely ignore it for a while and do other thing to bully them around. However, the card advantage from specter ends up throwing the whole plan off because suddenly I have to remove more than I did before and play on their initiative. That's what's been throwing me off lately. I'm used to them being on defense the whole
game and I guess somewhere along the way, MBC players figured out that was not a good place for them to be.

By killing all their stuff, the lifegain they got wasn't that bad and eventually I got to keep a threat. Games typically went to turn 13. It's basically the same as how I described playing against the new green devotion earlier today. The highest an opponent gained in life today was 8 from 3 gary and a devour flesh. It wasn't relevant.

For the BW midrange versions, I think sticking in speaker is still a good choice since they're focusing more on creatures where it performs far better. Also, their card advantage is massive between Ghost dads, whips, white removals, etc that I don't think controlling them fares well. That or I really got lucky the times before when I used it? Shrug.

You should definitely google jessica nigiri as Firefist ace

That was worth it.

Something about me and fox ears don't mix. No clue why.

Speaker is a dumb card.

"Do you have an out?"

YES: game continues and magic the gathering is played
NO: game immediately ends but actually continues for several more soul crushing turns

Yup.

I'm just glad I had a pet card idea for once that actually plays out properly.

The execution is another story but that's what I get trying to play in the big leagues while only playing less than 10 hours a week.

You should definitely google jessica nigiri as Firefist ace

That was worth it.

Something about me and fox ears don't mix. No clue why.

You say it like they should mix. This area of interest is exclusively Zem territory.

Jessicanigiriasfoxmcloud.jpeg

Nigri, please!

[deck=MDU's Post M15 Rw Burn (work in Progress)]Lands 23
8 Mountain
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple of Triumph
3 Mutavault
2 Battlefield Forge
1 Temple of Malice
1 Temple of Silence

Creatures 08
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Chandra's Phoenix

Burns and Other 29
4 Chained to the Rocks
4 Magma Jet
4 Lightning Strike
4 Boros Charm
4 Skullcrack
4 Warleader's Helix
3 Shock
2 Stroke the Flames

Sideboard 15
1 Mutavault
2 Mizzium Mortars
2 Banishing Light
2 Pillar of Light
2 Chandra, Pyromaster
3 Toil // Trouble
3 Hushwing Gryff[/deck]

I've always like the 6x Scry land approach (I find it amusing people thought it wouldn't work at first) so I'm glad more people are willing to try it, I have some concerns about running 2 Battlefield Forge because I fear killing myself vs aggro but since I'm running more 3cc spells I believe the extra untapped lands will be vital.

I may go up too 12 W in the future (I have
lots of W post board) and I'm considering running 2x Searing Bloods over 1x vaults and 1x Gryff from the sideboard - depending on the number of g and u devotion decks in the metagame.

Looks good mdu! I think you'll find that you don't take much damage from the forges overall. Usually you'll be tapping them for colorless, in my testing so far it usually never was more than a shock. I still think it's far superior to guildgates or confluence.

Agree with Robot.

Got a super IQ on Sunday, anticipating a huge upspike in Mono Green (this store is usually heavy green decks with a lot of black variants)

[deck]
2 Reckoner
3 Mizzium
2 Banishing Light
2 Chandra
2 Assemble
3 Flamespeaker
1 Pillar
[/deck]

Having no cards for control is somewhat intimidating (i get Chandra and speaker can be played), but I am convinced the top 3 at this LGS will be Black., Blue and Green. I started a new workout routine and am trying to not skip any days, so unfortunately I will no longer have time for testing on tues/thurs like I had been for previous tourneys. I am most theorycrafting and relying on experiences from you guys.

Where's your Hushwing, Purp?

While I think it might be good vs mono green, I see myself always being tapped out from dealing with their board on my turn.

I am also thinking Hushwing is not where I want to be against black, unless I was playing 1 drops.

A hushwing list would look something like this

[deck]
2 Hushwing
3 Reckoner
3 Mizzium
2 Chandra
1 Banishing Light
4 Firedirnker
[/deck]

I want to give Z's strat (confirmed by Elricity) a try at a competitive setting (not just my playtesting group) before I knock it. Elricity swears by Flamespeaker vs Green, so I want to give it a shot as well.