Comments on: Price of Progress: Regionals Report

By: Brendan H.

Brendan H. — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:27:19 +0000

I still really enjoy this deck, but do you or Mike have any ideas to be less cold to Swans? Wickerbough Elder and the like don’t come on line fast enough to beat turn 3 assault turn 4 swans on the draw, and the deck can’t really push through 20 damage before turn 5. Having 1 removal spell on the swans turn isn’t usually good enough, and Mind Shatter for 2 seems like leaving too much to luck.

By: Will Price

Will Price — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:19:37 +0000

In defense of gift, @madmanquail and @quetzilla:

First Quote: I am pretty sure that the hand I mulliganed would have been a mulligan no matter what the Gift was. Against an unknown opponent, I can’t possible keep that.

Second Quote: To win that game, or at least have a really good shot at winning, I needed a Shriekmaw to go with the Mannequin. Gift letting me look at 8 extra cards, digging me closer to Shriekmaws with each miss.

Putrid Leach is good, but I’m not convinced it is worth warping the land base of the deck and making yourself more vulnerable to opposing Anathemancer’s.

Overall, I have had enough really good experiences with Gift to think it merits main-deck inclusion. Gift is an awesome turn 5+ play and reasonable (although not ideal) on the earlier turns. If you aren’t having fun/success with the card, then by all means tune the deck to fit your needs.

By: madmanquail

madmanquail — Fri, 22 May 2009 21:40:35 +0000

yeah i agree. putrid leech makes the cut over gift. find a way to produce BG on turn two without compromising the high basic land count, and let the leech do the talking. it’s 75% of a chameleon colossus for 2 mana.

By: quetzilla

quetzilla — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:04:59 +0000

I agree on the leech, could possibly replace some forests with gilt-leaf palaces (via wayfinder) or twilight mires. As for actual cards to replace, maybe a gifts and ??? hard to find room.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:47:08 +0000

I know you and Mike have tested “literally all the cards that people think are good/ should be in the deck”, but my limited experience with the deck suggests that a good 2 drop would be helpful - the games where you don’t have rampant growth, you can sometimes get pretty far behind. I recently played against Chapin’s 5CB (with tokens), and the card that stood out for me was putrid leech. It’s actually a lot better than I thought, and I thought it was good. I think the card would be most excellent in your deck - it’s really good at stopping 3/3 scullers, finks, it trades with figures, ramgangs, plumeveils, dragons tokens etc., and it gets in for a bunch when uncontested. The combination of turn 2 leech turn 3 finks is deeply upsetting. The only issue is what to cut and, more importantly, how to make the mana work.
Thoughts?

By: Madmanquail

Madmanquail — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:50:33 +0000

Quoted:

“Game 1 our hero is again on the play but mulligans a hand 3 Forest, 3 Cloudthresher, and Gift of the Gargantuan. I mulligan into three consecutive no-land hands and obviously get rolled when I keep on 3. I am pretty confident in that mulligan, as Gift is not an ideal turn 3 play, and that hand had no hope against an aggressive deck.”

“Game 2 I keep a 7 card “speculative” hand with a Fallout, Mannequin, Civic, and Gift. The Fallout is dead as his draw consisted of Dauntless Escort and Liege. My first Gift shows me 4 lands, while my second Gift shows me 4 creatures, none of which are the Shriekmaw I would need to turn the game around.”

//end quote

Remind me why you are playing gift of the garbage?

By: Dan aka good man Dan

Dan aka good man Dan — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:58:28 +0000

Will as you know i played ramp and went 4-4 I lost to i guess it was b/w Reveillark, fog, blighting, and a red white deck that i prolly should have beat but i always find a way to mess up. I was able to beat 5color control 2 times, some deck with well idk what he was trying to do , and also another red white deck . I really like the deck and with me now going to play better I will be hitting some ptqs with the deck .

we will have to see what magic 2010 brings to the table for this deck

By: Will

Will — Thu, 21 May 2009 01:06:19 +0000

I played the Jund deck too. I went 1-3. I beat G/B rock deck with the Quillspike/Devoted Druid combo in round 1 and then lost to W/R/U Reveillark, Naya Five Power, and R/B aggro.

Against W/R/U Lark I lost a close game three (probably could have won if I had played better — it was a really long game; we finished just as time was called) after losing game 2 where I drew nothing but lands and rampant growths.

Your Naya Five Power match is how I thought it should play out, but I didn’t draw much removal and got destroyed by Where Ancients Tread and Ajani Vengeant.

R/B aggro was another close game three loss. I had the win on the board the next turn but he was favored to topdeck (I was on 1 life and he had six lands and an Anathemancer in his graveyard — almost anything other than a Terror or a Figure of Destiny was lethal).

Overall, I felt like I could have won the Lark and R/B matches if I’d played tighter and I don’t think the Naya deck is very good so I was happy playing the deck and hope to do better playing it again in an upcoming PTQ.