Post by dom on Jun 27, 2013 14:59:18 GMT -5
Hey Pauper to the People Community,
In the most recent episode, 115, Chris, Nate and Peter were kind enough to feature one of my whacky brews, the UG Tempo Deck centered around Blastoderm and Imperiosaurs (aka flying Dinosaurs). I will go through the development process of the deck and break it down card by card to explain my reasoning behind them.
First, here is the updated list:
Mainboard:
Creatures (24):
4 Wincrafter
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Blastoderm
4 Imperiosaur
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
Instants (5):
4 Brainstorm
1 Vapor Snag
Sorceries (7):
3 Hands of Binding
4 Temporal Spring
Lands (24):
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Terramorphic Expanse
8 Island
8 Forest
Sideboard:
Instants: (12)
3 Moment's Peace
1 Vines of Vastwood
2 Envelop
1 Negate
1 Vapor Snag
1 Snapback
3 Serene Heart
Sorceries: (3)
3 Gleeful Sabotage
I have been tinkering around with Simic for a long time in classic pauper, starting with a UG Threshold / Madness Deck (with Werebear :-) ) which was okay but could not hold his own in the Storm / Infect ladden metagame and eventually got dropped. With the release of Modern Masters, I reexamined the idea of Simic, mostly due to the rarity shift of Imperiosaur.
It began with the Idea to ramp into a turn three Imperiosaur, with the help of Sakura-Tribe Elder and Coiling Oracle. Blastoderm was a logical follow up, because it has the same stats as Imperiosaur and thus provides redundancy and makes it worth it playing the 8 two mana ramp cards. I admit that Coiling Oracle is only a ramp card about half of the time, but with the help of Brainstorm, the percentages are shifted somewhat.
Speaking of Brainstorm, the card was put into the Deck because of the eight Fetchlands. Imperiosaur comes with the necessity to run only basics, so manafixing via Karoos / Guildgates was out of the question from the get go. With those eight shuffle effects, Brainstorm becomes much more efficient, as proven by the performance of the card in Legacy. I belive that almost any blue deck has to run some form of carddraw / card manipulation and being able to play a deck that runs Brainstorm has always been something that i've had a soft spot for (I tried the card somewhat successfully in a Squadron Hawk deck, doing the old Search - Shuffle Back - Search again switcheroo known from CawBlade with Jace in Standard).
The next card I wanted to add was Ninja of Deep Hours. I figured that Ninja works favourably with Blastoderm, being able to reset it after the fading runs out. The card also works well with Coiling Oracle, picking it back up to get more card advantage.
Next up, I needed another early drop to support the Ninja. I stumbled over Wingcrafter accidentally and was immediatly in love with it. The idea to give my Blastoderms and T-Rexes (Imperiosaurs) flying and go to town appealed to me and flying Ninja's didn't sound to bad either. Lastly, the ability to give your Tribe Elder flying to block something an Insectile Aberration and then sacrifice it, thus resetting the Wingrafter (or Wincrafter, as I like to call it) to pair it up with your turn three Dino provided additional value.
So this gives us:
4 Wingcrafter
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Imperiosaur
4 Blastoderm
4 Ninja of Deep Hours
4 Brainstorm
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Evolving Wilds
16 Basic Lands
This was good enough for me as a creature base. I could see going down to three ninjas frankly, because they do not combine that well with Tribe-Elder and Imperiosaur.
This leaves us eight more slots. I had four Rancor in the original deck, but as stated earlier by myself and also during episode 115, it was the weakest link in the deck and got boarded out often. Sure, making your Imperiosaur a 7/5 Trampler and Oracles into actual Threats was nice, but often either not needed or too shaky against instant speed removal. Plus, there is the lack of synergy with Tribe-Elder and Blastoderm. Thus, Rancor got the Axe.
I replaced them with three Hands of Binding and a Vapor Snag. Hands seems awesome and I am really glad that the PttP crew came up with that. It synergyzes nicely with Blastoderm, ignorring the Shroud, and should also helps to push through Ninjas or just damage in general. I haven't tested it yet, but I am in love with it on paper. The miser Vapor Snag is due to the fact that I am playing agianst Delver Fiend a lot recently and the matchup is quite frankly just a nightmare, since our deck does not interact with them at all. Hands could also help with that, although I expect them to be a tad to slow on the draw.
The last four slots were occupied by Temproal Spring. I wanted a card that could take away opposing threats, allowing our beaters or Ninjas to get in there, but were also useful against decks without that many creatures. Spring fits that description perfectly, because those decks tend to play a lot of EtB tapped lands (either Karoos or Cloudposts) and Spring is able to just blow them out of the water.
This is how the finalised mainboard came together. Now to the sideboard Strategy. I will list up the most common matchups and my sideboard plan.
Cloudpost:
-1 Vapor Snag
-3 Hands
+1 Vines
+2 Envelop
+1 Negate
They tend to not play that many creatures, so Hands and Snag are pretty useless. Vines, Negate and Envelop help to fight off removal and carddaw spells. I would like another LD effect, but I have not come up with an adequate one yet. The matchup seems decent, since they seem to struggle against Blastoderm a lot.
Fissure Storm Without Green:
-1 Vapor Snag
-3 Hands of Binding
+2 Envelop
+1 Negate
+1 Snapback
Same Story here. The miser Snapback is in there to randomly fizzle a Snap if the do not expect it but is mostly a concession to not having something better. I might also try to board in the Vines instead, because it also helps to protect one of my threats, should they go off with fissure, but quite frankly, the game is mostly over at that point anyway. The matchup depends a lot on the fact if you can deploy a well timed Temporal Spring, but is generally pretty rough.
Fissure Storm with Green:
I have not played against this deck yet, but I assume that I would put in Serene Hearts and maybe also Gleeful Sabotage, although the latter seems too slow against them. I would probably cut some of the Ninjas.
Delver Fiend:
-4 Spring
-2 Tribe Elder
-2 Blastoderm
+1 Vines
+1 Snapback
+1 Vapor Snag
+3 Moment's Peace
+2 Envelop
This matchup is just a nightmare preboard, thus the excessive boarding. I decided to make the deck a lot more reactive, cutting two each of Blasto and Tribey, because they often have to go pretty much all in to try and kill you, and killing them after that should be arbitary after that.
Affinity:
+3 Gleeful Sabotage
+3 Moment's Peace
-4 Temporal Spring
-1 Vapor Snag
-1 Ninja of Deep Hours
Spring is just too slow here. I want match to turn into a race here, thus the boarding of Moment's Peace. The tactics is to fog them long enough that our flying Dinosaurs can close out the game. The problem with this plan is Atog / Fling / Deciple, which kind of makes me think that Peace is not the best option here. I generally like the matchup, altought affinity can blow any deck out of the water with a strong enough draw and there seems not much that can be done about that. I might try one mountain and some copies of Ancient Grudge in the Sideboard.
Stompy:
I have not played against stompy enough to know.
Goblins:
-4 Temporal Spring
+3 Moment's Peace
+1 Vapor Snag
Again, Spring is just too slow here. Moment's Peace is excellent, since they can just about never block your guys and pretty much have to race you as their only option. Snag is just a staright upgrade to Spring here. I like this matchup postboard, but game one can be rough.
Mono Black:
+1 Vines of Vastwood
+1 Negate
-1 Vapor Snag
-1 Temporal Spring
Honestly, I am unsure about this. I have not played against Mono Black in a while and the matchup seems pretty favourable. Bounce is generally bad against Mono Black, since all their guys have EtB triggers. Spring might be different, since you can bounce lands as well. I have to test more to know.
Boggles:
-1 Vapor Snag
-3 Hands of Binding
-4 Temporal Spring
-1 Ninja of Deep Hours
+3 Serene Heart
+3 Gleeful Sabotage
+3 Moment's Peace
Another matchup that is just horrible game one, but this one actually improves a lot after boarding. Serene Heart is just the stone nuts against them and they can often only recover through having at least two Rancors.
Mono U Delver
-4 Temporal Spring
+1 Vapor Snag
+1 Negate
+1 Snapback
+1 Gleeful Sabotage (if they run Spire Golem)
This is probably the deck's best matchup. I am not really sure why, but they often cannot cope against both Ninjas and huge guys. Either they have to tap out to have a blocker against Ninja, which just lets you cast Blasto, which they have no answer against, or you just eat them with Ninja. Again, Spring gets the axe for cheaper options.
Overall, it is apparent that Spring gets boarded out in most matchups. I still like it as a role player in the mainboard tough, because again, while not overperforming against everything beyond fissure storm, it does something against everything, which is why I like it.
This sums up my experiences and strategies with the deck. If any of you has played the deck and has some suggestons and / or questions, do not hesitate to ask me here or on Facebook (at Dominic Martz).
Thank you for reading and your interest in my whacky brew,
Dom
In the most recent episode, 115, Chris, Nate and Peter were kind enough to feature one of my whacky brews, the UG Tempo Deck centered around Blastoderm and Imperiosaurs (aka flying Dinosaurs). I will go through the development process of the deck and break it down card by card to explain my reasoning behind them.
First, here is the updated list:
Mainboard:
Creatures (24):
4 Wincrafter
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Blastoderm
4 Imperiosaur
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
Instants (5):
4 Brainstorm
1 Vapor Snag
Sorceries (7):
3 Hands of Binding
4 Temporal Spring
Lands (24):
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Terramorphic Expanse
8 Island
8 Forest
Sideboard:
Instants: (12)
3 Moment's Peace
1 Vines of Vastwood
2 Envelop
1 Negate
1 Vapor Snag
1 Snapback
3 Serene Heart
Sorceries: (3)
3 Gleeful Sabotage
I have been tinkering around with Simic for a long time in classic pauper, starting with a UG Threshold / Madness Deck (with Werebear :-) ) which was okay but could not hold his own in the Storm / Infect ladden metagame and eventually got dropped. With the release of Modern Masters, I reexamined the idea of Simic, mostly due to the rarity shift of Imperiosaur.
It began with the Idea to ramp into a turn three Imperiosaur, with the help of Sakura-Tribe Elder and Coiling Oracle. Blastoderm was a logical follow up, because it has the same stats as Imperiosaur and thus provides redundancy and makes it worth it playing the 8 two mana ramp cards. I admit that Coiling Oracle is only a ramp card about half of the time, but with the help of Brainstorm, the percentages are shifted somewhat.
Speaking of Brainstorm, the card was put into the Deck because of the eight Fetchlands. Imperiosaur comes with the necessity to run only basics, so manafixing via Karoos / Guildgates was out of the question from the get go. With those eight shuffle effects, Brainstorm becomes much more efficient, as proven by the performance of the card in Legacy. I belive that almost any blue deck has to run some form of carddraw / card manipulation and being able to play a deck that runs Brainstorm has always been something that i've had a soft spot for (I tried the card somewhat successfully in a Squadron Hawk deck, doing the old Search - Shuffle Back - Search again switcheroo known from CawBlade with Jace in Standard).
The next card I wanted to add was Ninja of Deep Hours. I figured that Ninja works favourably with Blastoderm, being able to reset it after the fading runs out. The card also works well with Coiling Oracle, picking it back up to get more card advantage.
Next up, I needed another early drop to support the Ninja. I stumbled over Wingcrafter accidentally and was immediatly in love with it. The idea to give my Blastoderms and T-Rexes (Imperiosaurs) flying and go to town appealed to me and flying Ninja's didn't sound to bad either. Lastly, the ability to give your Tribe Elder flying to block something an Insectile Aberration and then sacrifice it, thus resetting the Wingrafter (or Wincrafter, as I like to call it) to pair it up with your turn three Dino provided additional value.
So this gives us:
4 Wingcrafter
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Imperiosaur
4 Blastoderm
4 Ninja of Deep Hours
4 Brainstorm
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Evolving Wilds
16 Basic Lands
This was good enough for me as a creature base. I could see going down to three ninjas frankly, because they do not combine that well with Tribe-Elder and Imperiosaur.
This leaves us eight more slots. I had four Rancor in the original deck, but as stated earlier by myself and also during episode 115, it was the weakest link in the deck and got boarded out often. Sure, making your Imperiosaur a 7/5 Trampler and Oracles into actual Threats was nice, but often either not needed or too shaky against instant speed removal. Plus, there is the lack of synergy with Tribe-Elder and Blastoderm. Thus, Rancor got the Axe.
I replaced them with three Hands of Binding and a Vapor Snag. Hands seems awesome and I am really glad that the PttP crew came up with that. It synergyzes nicely with Blastoderm, ignorring the Shroud, and should also helps to push through Ninjas or just damage in general. I haven't tested it yet, but I am in love with it on paper. The miser Vapor Snag is due to the fact that I am playing agianst Delver Fiend a lot recently and the matchup is quite frankly just a nightmare, since our deck does not interact with them at all. Hands could also help with that, although I expect them to be a tad to slow on the draw.
The last four slots were occupied by Temproal Spring. I wanted a card that could take away opposing threats, allowing our beaters or Ninjas to get in there, but were also useful against decks without that many creatures. Spring fits that description perfectly, because those decks tend to play a lot of EtB tapped lands (either Karoos or Cloudposts) and Spring is able to just blow them out of the water.
This is how the finalised mainboard came together. Now to the sideboard Strategy. I will list up the most common matchups and my sideboard plan.
Cloudpost:
-1 Vapor Snag
-3 Hands
+1 Vines
+2 Envelop
+1 Negate
They tend to not play that many creatures, so Hands and Snag are pretty useless. Vines, Negate and Envelop help to fight off removal and carddaw spells. I would like another LD effect, but I have not come up with an adequate one yet. The matchup seems decent, since they seem to struggle against Blastoderm a lot.
Fissure Storm Without Green:
-1 Vapor Snag
-3 Hands of Binding
+2 Envelop
+1 Negate
+1 Snapback
Same Story here. The miser Snapback is in there to randomly fizzle a Snap if the do not expect it but is mostly a concession to not having something better. I might also try to board in the Vines instead, because it also helps to protect one of my threats, should they go off with fissure, but quite frankly, the game is mostly over at that point anyway. The matchup depends a lot on the fact if you can deploy a well timed Temporal Spring, but is generally pretty rough.
Fissure Storm with Green:
I have not played against this deck yet, but I assume that I would put in Serene Hearts and maybe also Gleeful Sabotage, although the latter seems too slow against them. I would probably cut some of the Ninjas.
Delver Fiend:
-4 Spring
-2 Tribe Elder
-2 Blastoderm
+1 Vines
+1 Snapback
+1 Vapor Snag
+3 Moment's Peace
+2 Envelop
This matchup is just a nightmare preboard, thus the excessive boarding. I decided to make the deck a lot more reactive, cutting two each of Blasto and Tribey, because they often have to go pretty much all in to try and kill you, and killing them after that should be arbitary after that.
Affinity:
+3 Gleeful Sabotage
+3 Moment's Peace
-4 Temporal Spring
-1 Vapor Snag
-1 Ninja of Deep Hours
Spring is just too slow here. I want match to turn into a race here, thus the boarding of Moment's Peace. The tactics is to fog them long enough that our flying Dinosaurs can close out the game. The problem with this plan is Atog / Fling / Deciple, which kind of makes me think that Peace is not the best option here. I generally like the matchup, altought affinity can blow any deck out of the water with a strong enough draw and there seems not much that can be done about that. I might try one mountain and some copies of Ancient Grudge in the Sideboard.
Stompy:
I have not played against stompy enough to know.
Goblins:
-4 Temporal Spring
+3 Moment's Peace
+1 Vapor Snag
Again, Spring is just too slow here. Moment's Peace is excellent, since they can just about never block your guys and pretty much have to race you as their only option. Snag is just a staright upgrade to Spring here. I like this matchup postboard, but game one can be rough.
Mono Black:
+1 Vines of Vastwood
+1 Negate
-1 Vapor Snag
-1 Temporal Spring
Honestly, I am unsure about this. I have not played against Mono Black in a while and the matchup seems pretty favourable. Bounce is generally bad against Mono Black, since all their guys have EtB triggers. Spring might be different, since you can bounce lands as well. I have to test more to know.
Boggles:
-1 Vapor Snag
-3 Hands of Binding
-4 Temporal Spring
-1 Ninja of Deep Hours
+3 Serene Heart
+3 Gleeful Sabotage
+3 Moment's Peace
Another matchup that is just horrible game one, but this one actually improves a lot after boarding. Serene Heart is just the stone nuts against them and they can often only recover through having at least two Rancors.
Mono U Delver
-4 Temporal Spring
+1 Vapor Snag
+1 Negate
+1 Snapback
+1 Gleeful Sabotage (if they run Spire Golem)
This is probably the deck's best matchup. I am not really sure why, but they often cannot cope against both Ninjas and huge guys. Either they have to tap out to have a blocker against Ninja, which just lets you cast Blasto, which they have no answer against, or you just eat them with Ninja. Again, Spring gets the axe for cheaper options.
Overall, it is apparent that Spring gets boarded out in most matchups. I still like it as a role player in the mainboard tough, because again, while not overperforming against everything beyond fissure storm, it does something against everything, which is why I like it.
This sums up my experiences and strategies with the deck. If any of you has played the deck and has some suggestons and / or questions, do not hesitate to ask me here or on Facebook (at Dominic Martz).
Thank you for reading and your interest in my whacky brew,
Dom