By AHappyClown (Clown) on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 08:33 pm: Greetings everyone, I said a little while back that I would begin making some real posts, so here one is.
I've been toying with a different form of Suicide for a while. Since I don't own any Sinkholes and don't have much hope of acquiring them any time soon, I've been experimenting with Winter Orb instead.
Here is the deck that I've been playing with for reference:
Critters:
4 Sarcomancy
4 Carnophage
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Phyrexian Negator
Disruption:
4 Duress
4 Hymn To Tourach
3 Null Rod
3 Winter Orb
The Other Stuff:
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
3 Tainted Pact
Mana:
4 Dark Ritual
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
16 Swamp
Sideboard:
Must...
4 Spinning Darkness
kill...
3 Contagion
Sligh...
3 Masticore
1 Sol Ring
4 Phyrexian War Beast
(the sideboard is still tentative)
You may notice some odd card choices here, mainly:
3 Tainted Pact, no Consult; I hate Consult, that card has screwed me more times than I can count. Or maybe I've just screwed myself by playing it wrong, either way I hate it. Tainted Pact is much safer, and provides a very similar effect in such a redundant deck. I am also aware that I should play 50% Snow-Covered Swamps, so no need to inform me.
Lots of zombies/zombie tokens; Sarcos are sweet with Negators and one drops are good with WOrb.
I understand that the deck may not be optimal, and I'd like to address that eventually. However, I would first like to address my topic: Winter Orb in place of Sinkholes.
Sinkhole
The relevant pros:
Destroys a land, provides tempo advantage. With Sinkhole, problem lands are not so problematic. After all, this is Type 1, and the best lands are legal and very often played. Can Potentially mana-screw your opponent.
The relevant cons:
Can be Misdirected; if an opponent pitches to Mis-D, it is still card parity, however you have lost tempo. Its vulnerable to Teferi's Response, providing the opponent with massive card advantage.
Winter Orb:
The relevant pros:
Is immune to Teferi's Response. Cannot be Misdirected. Provides long-term disruption. Can be sacced to Negator in a pinch(especially helpful with multiples in play). Slows sligh's Cursed Scrolls. Can be cast using mana from Wastelands.
The relevant cons:
Is vulnerable to Disenchant, D-Blow, Seal of Cleansing, Aura of Silence, Powder Keg, Nevinyrral's Disk. Aura of Silence makes it cost more. Has little to no effect on fast aggro strategies.
I think that the pros of WOrb outweigh the cons, and many of the potential disasters that can result from sinking a control player's hole are avoided. Additionally, in combination with Null Rod, WOrb forces the powered control player to truly suffer while WOrb is protected from Powder Kegs.
Any thoughts?
By Schmakt (Schmakt) on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 08:54 pm: hahah...
"sinking a control player's hole"
I really like the Sinkholes in my SuiBlack deck. Control is really the only thing I'm afraid of (in regards to the Sinkholes), and then it's only 3 cards (at most) that I'd fear. (2 Mis-D's and 1 Response usually)
Playing WOrbs, however, sounds like a lot of fun to try. I'll give it a whirl and see what I think. The Null Rods are a must to conteract the Keeper artifact mana, so maybe this will work out. The biggest problem I see is being able to get the Rod and a WOrb on the table at the same time. (and keep them there) While I rarely counter a Sinkhole, I'm wondering if these cards aren't just going to be big counterspell targets... Let us know how the testing goes; hopefully I'll have some good results for you too.
By Rakso, Patriarch & Rules Ayatollah (Rakso) on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 08:57 pm: This isn't a new question; I posed it a loooong time ago.
The tempo advantage can be crippling early, true, but there's also the color screw factor against non-mono.
By wuaffiliate (Wu) on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 09:11 pm: the thing is that sui is weak vs aggro so worbs dont help that cause ;). the deck needs sinks to help it early vs aggro. when you SB you out duress and Worbs(sligh still operates with this out and rods to a better job of stoping scroll.) you will have only hymns to disrupt. i really do think sinks are needed its cheap disruption mana wise that is ;)
i have ran Worbs before and worb + sinks + rods vs control is killer, yet the extra help worb gives you isnt needed and weakens you vs aggro.
just mt $0.02.
By AHappyClown (Clown) on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 09:24 pm: Shmakt: I've tested the deck some. I even loaned it to a friend to play at a not-so-local T1 tournament of 20 or so people(the Feb. 24th cash T1 in Syracuse). He did fairly well with it, smashing every control deck that he encountered. Unfortunately, he was paired against Sligh decks for the duration of the tournament I believe.
Isn't everything in Suicide a big counterspell target? Fortunately, the Orbs and Rods are only 2cc, so they aren't too juicy of Mana Drain targets.
Heh. Orbs and Rods.
Rakso: dammit, I thought I had stumbled onto a brand new piece of tech.
I had forgetten about the color screw factor. My environment is heavily OSE and friends(U/x and U/x/x aggro-control), so there aren't many opportunities to color screw someone.
By Gzeiger (Gzeiger) on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 10:49 pm: Well, I do think if you don't like Consult you're doing something very wrong. With only one piece of true search in the deck (Demonic Tutor) the cards you lose from your library aren't resources that will ever be available to you. It can be psychologically devastating to see good cards get removed, but that's exactly as likely as a bad card getting removed so you get to draw the good one.
In a deck with such little search and so few one-ofs in any case, the only bad Consult is one that actually decks you. That really never happens.
By AHappyClown (Clown) on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 11:28 pm: Gzeiger: I guess that it's a matter of personal taste, but I really can't stand Consult. I just don't like it. I've had this happen waaaay too often: Turn 2: Me: "Consult naming (insert card that I have like 50 of in the deck, for this instance, we'll use 'swamp')", mill away 3 Hymn, 2 Negator, 1 Hyppie, 3 Duress, 1 YawgWill, 2 Null Rod. Opponent: "HA HA, you can't even touch me now", opponent drops Abyss and Kegs my team, I scoop.
But that's all beside the point. The main purpose of this thread was to debate the use of Sinkhole vs. Winter Orb.
Wu: I can see how Sinks would be better against aggro. The thing is, doesn't Suicide get rolled by aggro pre-board anyway?
By Dandan (Dandan) on Friday, April 26, 2002 - 01:40 am: Suicide gets rolled if it doesn't know "who's the beatdown". Turn 1 Negator is not too clever vs Sligh. Usually destroying the hand while your one drops hold up the horde (and bleed you a little) then dropping your fatties is the way to go if possible. Suicide isn't strong against aggro but it shouldn't just roll over and die. You have 12 other Lightning Rods apart from Negator.
Stompy should murder you but that's life.
I think the problem against control is this:
'You want it all, you want it all, you want it now' (source - Queen, modified for grammar)
You want to cast early threats, follow it up with discard and other disruption. I think the WOrbs will end up as the last card you cast, since you'd usually rather cast almost any card in your deck before them. They are not bad but they hurt you vs aggro and Sink vs WOrb against control is fairly even IMHO.
Finally Consultation is a must and is no more of a risk than the rest of the Suicide strategy.
By Dozer (Dozer) on Friday, April 26, 2002 - 04:41 am: I'd probably try both Sinks and WOrb in the same deck, but I would not cut Sinks in favor of Orbs. To me, the danger of my Sinkhole being Misdirected is marginal - I rather have Sinkhole misdirected than Hymn. Response hurts, but that's life. OTOH, Winter Orb draws anti-artifact spells away from Null Rod.
But: When Abyss is out, and you have Winter Orb in play, you won't be able to race the Abyss because you can't lay creatures fast enough. Sinkholes are also better against Sligh and Stompy because those are so low on land that they often utilize WOrb themselves. Destroying that single land is way preferable.
It seems that Winter Orb is better against Mono-U than Sinkholes, but Sinks are preferable against Keeper (and aggro). You should cream Mono-U anyway, so I' vote Sinkholes.
Dozer
By Gizzard (Gizzard) on Friday, April 26, 2002 - 05:18 am: Back in the day of Necro, the problem was that the Black deck needs its mana to keep casting a never-ending stream of spells. Is the Orb hurting your early game as much as it is hurting your opponents? The thing about a Sinkhole is that you spend 2 mana to gain a advantage; with the Orb you have to make sure your deck is better equipped to take advantage of tight mana than your opponent. Other aggro decks will do just fine, so in that case, is the Orb best as a sideboard card against control?
As for the rest of the deck, is it worth playing Y-Will if your plan is to get the Orb out? The combo of Rituals and Y-Will may be to broken to leave out, but I'd keep an eye on its effectiveness.
The Sol Ring in the side seems odd. Either you want it or you dont. Its very nice under the Orb, though you dont have a lot of spells that can use 2 colorless efficiently.
Random fun thought: If you slow down the board with Orb, does making Zombies with Zombie Infestation become a useful dump for spare cards? (The answer is probably "no" with a capital N, but keep an eye on your card count while Orbing.)
By Magimaster (Magimaster) on Friday, April 26, 2002 - 09:42 am: Demonic Consultation is a must. It's not personal taste, it's wether you want your deck to be optimal or not.
Gizzard : that's a cool idea.
By Glenchuy (Glenchuy) on Friday, April 26, 2002 - 10:32 am: i say, go with sinkholes
By Matt D'Avanzo, Paragon of Vintage (Matt) on Friday, April 26, 2002 - 03:14 pm: It's interesting. I think one of the problems is that, barring Rituals, you actually have several spells in the deck that are really hard to cast under Worb.
Against Sligh Winter Orb does hurt their ability to scroll, however you're already running Null Rods who cares?
Against mono-U Worb is probably better, since you can't go into massive mana denial with you Wastelands and they run more Mis-Ds.
Against Stompy Sinkhole is pretty bad (4 Rangers), but Worb is just plain dead. You're going to help them by playing it.
Against Keeper the ability to color screw is key, but I would NOT be happy to see Worb and Null Rod down.
Things that make the deck slightly better against aggro arne't really an advantage since you're still going to lose to those decks. The point of playing Suicide is to beat control. I'm not saying worb is dumb, I'm just saying to consider it independently from the aggro matchups.
For the record back in Mirage Block there was a "Suicide" black deck that was B/u and ran Winter Orbs. It also used countermagic like Memory Lapse to gain tempo advantage under Worb. We also have mana leak today. Another thought is that with blue you might actually be able to SB and beat mono-red. This is all unlikely to make a great type I deck, but it's worth playing around with.
By Matt D'Avanzo, Paragon of Vintage (Matt) on Friday, April 26, 2002 - 03:14 pm: On the other hand Hyppie under Worb is, well, nasty.
By Rakso, Patriarch & Rules Ayatollah (Rakso) on Saturday, April 27, 2002 - 05:12 am: No, Forgotten Orb really used the Lapse/Orb trick like Time Walks.
By BeBe, the Redeemer (Bebe) on Saturday, April 27, 2002 - 10:21 am: The decks Mattrefers to are the ICE decks. They used either W/U or B/U (Black Ice) depending on metagame preferences. Thet had Knights, and a few assorted Weenies, Spikes, Memory Lapses, Mana Shorts, etc.
I remember having my ass handed to me playing Black Ice when I ran across Paul McCabe playing a fish deck (then World Champion). I discovered its weaknesses against a good aggro/control or aggro build quickly as the tournament progressed.
I like the Pacts in the deck. Consider mixing up Snow-Covered and rergular Swamps though if you play them. I've even played duals in a black deck with them as well (does increase sidebord options for your metagame as a bonus).