Questions for experienced Pilots
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I am primarily a Storm player and i always try to better my understanding of other decks to improve my match ups. Sadly i don't have the resources and not a extended enough local scene to test a lot or to be able to borrow other decks to try them out against my own.
In this Thread i would like to ask some questions about a variety of archetypes, decks and strategies in order to understand them better. For a lot of those questions i may already have a strong opinion, but i still want to see if that conflicts with another viewpoint.Lets start with Oath players:
I assume that you try to play the Control deck in the match up against TPS. What kind of disruption do you struggle the most with, what is you main concern? Discard, counter magic or permanent disruption like for example Defense Grid (Xantid Swarm and others) . Since Pitch long style Storm lists aren't very popular atm: If you could choose what to play against, would you prefer a list that has 1 Defense Grid main deck or would you rather have them another discard spell in that spot?
Assuming you are on the play: Would you rather hold a starting Hand that has a lot of disruption but no fast threat, most likely securing you a few relatively safe turns, or would you rather have a hand with minimal disruption, that is likely to get handled with (lets say 1 force and a blue card) but you have turn 1 mox, orchard, into oath of druids, securing a fast but more risky kill? Does that change on the draw?
If you are playing a variant with the Bomberman combo, how big a problem do you have with GY disruption or would you rather just oath into Griselbrand anyway? -
@Evoclipse I will take the aggressive role if my hand allows me to combo off on the opponent's turn 1.5 (i.e. Mox Orchard Oath on the play, or Show and Tell on the draw.)
Otherwise I take the control role, as giving TPS two unmolested turns is far too dangerous. This requires finding a hand with 2+ pieces of disruption or counter magic, with no regard for whether I have any combo pieces in hand yet.
An early Defense Grid is scary, but can be played around. They become truly dangerous in multiples, so I would run either four or none (to punish me for siding in Nature's Claim).
Cabal Therapy is by far the scariest discard spell, since it synergizes so well with your Probes and my Orchards. Duress and Thoughtseize are ok -- they can clear a path during a mid-game critical turn, but early on I'm mostly glad you're not using that black mana to combo off.
My most feared sideboard cards, though, are surprises like Sadistic Sacrament, Flusterstorm, and even Leyline of Sanctity. Of course, the effectiveness of these cards is much diminished if I know your decklist.
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For the Storm players of old: What are metagame indicators that make running Pitch counters and having generally a more counter based disruption suite compared to the discard based disruption prevalent in most Storm builds today desirable? Why did pitch-long work in the first place, what made it popular to run pitch counters? Especially with the rise of mental misstep, fighting through discard spells, why are they used today instead of pitch counter magic (and maybe own missteps). European TPS lists used pitch counters as well, why was that the case, and why isn't it the case today?
How many blue cards should you run to make forces viable?
Would be running force of wills over discard spells viable or better in the current meta if lets say dark petition would be a blue card? -
@Evoclipse
The old Drain decks were limited in what they could present as counterspells. Mana Drain and Force of Will was pretty much the extent of it, so you typically only needed 1 card to defend your combo, though of course you could have double Force backup as well.
Another idea is that you want to be resolving your Draw7s, so it is counterintuitive to have to Duress before casting a Draw7, because then you're just giving them a fresh 7.
I think pitch counters are more effective for stopping disruptive permanents from coming into play rather than Duress which is more effective against counterspells.
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@desolutionist do you think in the current meta a more pitch counter based deck could be better then a deck with 6-8 discard spells? I am working on a deck which increases the blue count significantly, but i am not sure if the inclusion of pitch counters is even desirable in the current meta.
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@Evoclipse I dont like pitch counters in storm because you cant play them proactively to build your storm count. Also, cabal therapy is pretty insane in a deck with 4x probe that really only cares about a fairly narrow range of cards.
