When you’re playing the mutually agreed amounts of blue interaction, it can be easy to fall into reactive ways of thinking and consequently lacking in more active ways to advance your gameplan in relation to your opponents’. Cue the White Nauseam philosophy, one of the main concepts that Farm’s deckbuilding revolves around. However, a lot of time has passed since the card reigned at the top, as today many powerful cards come to compete with the throne Ad Nauseam once almost held monopoly on. 40-life-pools are already gargantuan in terms of aggro and burn -typed gameplans in EDH, so dividing your already mediocre damage between multiple opponents guarantees that you’ll be at best tickling everyone and at worst making them focus on you for hitting them. But how does Oko compare? Yep, the dreaded Jace, The Mind Sculptor has been unbanned in Modern format. Being able to kill Sylvan library, Rhystic study, or Necropotence helps Reclamation sage a bit but again Manglehorn is a hate bear. The viability in regards to the overall mana cost depends on how powerful the creature by itself is, but by default you want creatures that are as cheap as possible and sacrifice themselves for mana or other resources, with evasion being a big bonus for easier Tymna connections down the line. A Food Chain line? If your local metagame ever (d)evolves into that, adding 1-2 mass removal spells like, That does it for the matchups against the most well versed out 3 main archetypes of cEDH. But what if I told you that your deck’s speed isn’t purely dependent on how much mana your combo costs? There we go, the Christmas Land right there. A card originally printed in Shards of Alara that has seen play in some of the most prevalent combo decks in almost every eternal format it has been legal in. While the details of the diet plan aren’t specifically stated in the marketing materials, GOLO claims that users can eat more food and still lose weight, and they can eat foods they love. The Drake: While generally it is important to have a backup if flying shitlord gets exiled, I have found that 99% of the time I never need this card. Hey folks! Press J to jump to the feed. : If your opponent is playing any Hulk pile that requires casting spells afterward, : Your strongest weapon against Hulk is ironically our other opponents’ interaction against, … call it out. Consultation is not as much of an archetype as it is a package that is being pasted into every deck that by default tries to go fast, usually along the lines of Ad Nauseam, Food Chain or some other engine. Our primary piece here is. Time to go into detail how this Turbo Ad Nauseam deck helmed by Tymna, usually referred to as “Farm” (courtesy of the archetype’s originator RiverMayCry) functions and brings in such results. Some Turbo Nauseam decks even abuse cards like Razaketh to maximize the amount of value you get from your cheap beaters, supporting one of the combos we’re already running that’s being covered next. : The amount of games I’ve been in and where the stax player has been beaten out by the table is more numerous than one might imagine. for additional words on specific matchups. I’m back and I’m ready to talk about [card Zedruu the Greathearted]Zedruu[/card]! With as much as I’ve advocated Farm’s strengths already, there of course is a flip side, and I’m sure you’ve surmised some of it already. Meta-specific hate cards like, There were more than half a dozen decks that won by abusing Lab Man before 2019 in the cEDH scene, but now with the arrival of. Reddit gives you the best of the internet in one place. A card once hailed as the figurehead piece of competitive EDH decks, maybe of even the cEDH community itself nearly half a decade backward. While the deck can do a lot to pre-emptively protect itself or recover from a failed attempt, there isn’t much you can do against an opposing Silence if an opponent ever decides to cast one during your combo turn. The newly printed Ranger-Captain of Eos and Veil of Summer increase density on exactly these kinds of effects, while the already uncounterable land-based support cards like Boseiju, Who Shelters All and Cavern of Souls make for easy resolution of Ad Nauseam or Abolisher trivial against late-game hands full of counterspells. As such the booyman nature or jace was built up, and peeked at his unbanning, since then he is shown as very strong but not format defining or warping. Simultaneously, the tempting process of netting more and more cards and resolving an ever-changing puzzle presented by those cards has also become an addiction of many EDH combo and storm pilots over the years. Speaking of revealing opportune information to the table, one of the strongest interaction tools in these kind of lists is the miniscule amount of attention they receive in their plays, assuming you play your cards right of course (no pun intended). This especially applies to non-creature storm decks like, : Grasp is also a very useful card against Consultation, as these decks like Ad Nauseam almost as much as we do, with some exceptions. If you still can’t get enough mana to win despite seeing 50-80 cards in your deck, finding enough to crack that Children of Korlis is enough to bring you back to your golden age of high life totals and sculpt into the perfect 7 that wins you the game on your next turn. Because mana margins are so thin in the early turns, landing the Study early will probably guarantee that you never have less than 7 cards in hand. Teneb, the Harvester $ 1.00 $ 23.00 $ 22.00: 2,300%. So in the end, we ended up winning from a pretty mediocre Ad Nauseam with white mana open at all times to Children of Korlis our way back to starting life if things look grim. You proceed to Ad Nauseam, which also has no responses. As no-one presented any counterspells to your, Hand-wise, however, it might look like we’re in a jam. Initially invented and coined by RiverMayCry who had been trying to make Orzhov combo decks work in cEDH for years prior, White Nauseam-esque deckbuilding essentially expands from the, The reason why this lifegain theme works so well in the current cEDH metagame is that the surge of midrange decks has essentially extended game times so much that hitting people down with creatures is starting to show its head. If your deck runs mass removal spells, those can be handy depending on the situation. But then you win. However, a lot of time has passed since the card reigned at the top, as today many powerful cards come to compete with the throne Ad Nauseam once almost held monopoly on. Essentially, we live in a sort of “midrange combo” climate, where the once hailed balls-to-the-wall speedy combo strategies get overlooked as only a meager sub-par approach to the now omnipresent Flash Hulk (to the point that even Flash Hulk isn’t trying to be fast with its newer iterations, not that it really needs to). For any storm veteran, this is a pretty obvious instant keep. If they try rounding up the table against you, play the attention politics as much as you can and try beating them at their own value game. We have Skullclamp as pretty much the only reasonable option to draw cards, so we need at least 2 more mana to cast and equip Skullclamp. Later on, when you deem Therapist or other creatures you’ve landed unnecessary, you can start sacrificing them to check opposing hands for interaction, or scouting a silent opponent’s hand for combo cards to focus the whole table’s attention on them. A Sickening Dreams kill is also possible here by just tutoring and casting Angel’s Grace with Wishclaw Talisman and casting Ad Nauseam from the grave via Yawgwill to draw your whole deck, using the final rituals left to cast Dreams for well over 50 damage to the whole table. Black hand hate like Thoughtseize and Cabal Therapy, as well as smaller creature-based effects like Cabal Therapist and Hope of Ghirapur close the circle of layers upon layers of easy ways to baiting interaction before ever putting Ad Nauseam to the stack, or simply forcing the opposition to watch in literal silence when you eventually do so. Meta-specific hate cards like Containment Priest, Hushbringer and Hallowed Moonlight can be used against Hulk if you can’t turn the table against them with table talk, but use any static effects sparingly and mainly as last-ditch blowouts. Getting a “wheel-proof” Ad Naus is very useful for us, but don’t be afraid to take a, : Consultation combo lines go through grave hate like nothing, but it’s good to note that every Consultation deck in their right mind also runs. Flash Hulk players are your some of your hardest opponents to deal with, but you’re fortunately not alone with this dilemma. The words “Ad Nauseam”, meaning literally “until you’re so sick you throw up” could also be easily used to describe the lengthy hold the card had over online competitive EDH scenes. The Smothering Tithe and Dark Confidant make this one of the better hands of this level, but even with 1-2 creature cards instead of those two would suffice if you’re already mulliganing deep. With the appearance of. An Invitation to Edit by Rhystic Studies… The once troublesome policy of “hit the player with the least life” flips on its head to “don’t hit the player with the most life”, practically leading to a total cessation of incoming combat damage. We have Arbor Elf and Memnite, so no shortage of free bodies so far (Total cost 5+[B] & 2 life). Going from 1-7 mana as early as Turn 3, the deck sports big colorless payoffs and a deck built to consistently hit its lands on time! It stops the beats against you altogether. Goblin Matron (7th) $ 1.00 $ 112.00 $ 111.00: 11,200%. The boss nass + gilded lotus on an elf combo is a pretty strong additional combo, and plus the Drake is surprisingly useless to clone or simply play out for value. basically become jokes when you cast a Silence. There are many more foil cards that are heavily sought within … could also be easily used to describe the lengthy hold the card had over online competitive EDH scenes. Now that the cEDH landscape has delved so deep into Consultation decks that even fast Flash Hulks are a secondary to grinding value with Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study, it’s time to start asking the question “Do I Win?” as often as possible, and as fast as possible. This specific list is tooled to significantly slow down the early game by reliably having a counterspell on 2, or a way to interact with a resolved Selvala by turn 2. Finding out what the Consultation player is going for helps the table to respond accordingly when they eventually cast their haymakers, so help other players as much as you can verbally in pinpointing the right course of action (and interaction) for that point in time. Not to overuse the phrase “there’s no comparison”, but...... There’s a reason Oko was banned out of 1 format where JTMS was UNBANNED in (and very healthy in). ), but Farm lists especially make more than a few intentional deckbuilding concessions despite their access to colors to achieve a huge amount of consistency with their storm-like victories utilizing the life-hungry black instant. And with our deck that’s chock full of these effects, I can guarantee that no-one wants to intuitively counter that 1-mana instant on an empty stack. While one could consider such a strategy to be indicative of a haymaker format, when a deck like Reanimator becomes the boogeyman it means the format is very receptive to new ideas, as its “unfair” strategy is easily hated out and thus can be forced to play a fair game against any deck in the field. Stax decks like Blood Pod can bring our combo plans to a halt with a couple of properly timed spheres or Rule of Law effects, but with Farm, we have several tactics we can use to deal with them. Simply keep in mind that Blood Moon is a card so you don’t get blown out by not fetching those basic lands when you could’ve. Having talked a lot about how the deck is built already, the game-ending combos themselves are not the number one priority, although they eventually become necessary too. As most of us remember, when Jace came out, he was also played in every single format where he was legal and completely destroyed them. . The deck has a lot of redundancy due to the 20+ counterspells, allowing for significant modular alterations to fit your own meta/boogeyman deck. Shooting your discard spells is more of a thing to consider when forced to a 1v1 situation against stax down the line. Bolas is a puppet-master, preferring to coax others into doing his dirty work for him. Fast Mana + Creatures that land before Tymna (or Necropotence). Silence effects also work against any of the non-Consultation lines like with Food Chain Sliver, or with any of the storm lines by CST, Kess etc. The deck is already built around sketchy Ad Nauseams by forcing such a low mana curve, going all-out on mana production and abusing cards like Scroll Rack to basically make even the mana-hungriest 20-card hands able to force through a win. Rhystic Study just isn't good enough. Ceremonious Rejection in KAL), why have they not printed a 1 mana blue counter that says "Counter target planeswalker"? 1x Rhystic Study 1x Stranglehold: Creatures (8) 1x Charmbreaker Devils 1x Consecrated Sphinx 1x Phyrexian Metamorph 1x Rune-Scarred Demon 1x Solemn Simulacrum 1x Sphinx of Uthuun 1x Urabrask the Hidden 1x Wurmcoil Engine: His Allies. The sheer robustness of combos like Laboratory Maniac, Food Chain, as well as build-around generals like Najeela and Gitrog, plays through most stax pieces without much effort.In short, most contemporary online games these days hinge on drawn out Mexican standoffs, where counterspells are fired at the latest moment possible, and where slipping in early wins becomes an exception rather than the rule. In that sense, what does a huge, beefy blocker or a lifegain engine do in this environment? Some of the weaknesses mentioned above can be very detrimental to your general piloting experience depending on the meta you’re playing in, as well as on how you are going to handle it verbally. Given that their combos require only two cards and two mana to bring about a game-winning game state, usually with protection, some games you just lose to these decks, and that is a concession Farm is willing to make. It's hard to say if this is better than Reclamation sage. If you’re curious for more in-depth matchup coverage, look to the deck’s TappedOut page for additional words on specific matchups. Another strong part to an Ad Nauseam deck with access to white is doubling down on Silence effects: cards that make our opponents unable to cast any meaningful interaction for minimal cost while also not risking you with a loss like a simple combo attempt would. The deck thrives on cards like these, as small utility creatures can potentially serve 2-3 purposes thanks to Tymna, even when on the surface-level they wouldn’t seem like they’d do much. Lifegain for its own sake isn’t usually that viable in many formats, but with the aid of Tymna, creatures with lifegain properties become not only that, but also card-draw. There were more than half a dozen decks that won by abusing Lab Man before 2019 in the cEDH scene, but now with the arrival of Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, the sample size of decks running at least one of these two has fittingly doubled, more so since the ban of Paradox Engine. Therefore, if people get a little bit too interested in our Tymna, we might face a full stop in our value-grinding gameplan. You’re up against 3 blue players, two of which have 1 blue mana open. The card-draw potential with no direct subsequent costs in mana means essentially free cards in any table that doesn’t provide early game blockers, and sometimes even that is not enough to deal with the ever-recurring value menace Tymna threatens from the command zone. Rhystic Studies did a fantastic video on him, where he coined him: The Boogeyman. : Just like with discard, be conservative with your removal against stax. If it’s anything more than that, however, then try leveraging the removal held by the rest of the table. However, with the arrival of the more strict Mulligan rules in EDH, stax has taken a backseat for a while (save for very established playgroups), and the surge of midrange makes using card slots for hate pieces even less favorable despite the arrival of London mulligans. Your turn 3. your own Pins on Pinterest Our total mana is now in pool with Savannah open, and we’ve gone from 3 cards in graveyard to 6, so Threshold is now starting to look more than achievable. Next it’s time to look at how we can put all the theory above regarding Farm into practice with some mulligan and gameplay examples. And even if you don’t draw into enough fast mana and end up passing turn, sculpting into your perfect 7-card-grip often is more valuable than risking a turn cycle where you might get countered. Fortunately though, we do have a combo “extender” that Cobble has already talked covered in one of his prior articles: 1. Vampiric Tutor gets us an easy Yawgmoth’s Will or Scroll Rack depending on what we need after getting our 20+ cards, or alternatively a recursion spell to try another Ad Naus if it gets countered. A little bit more resilient than the Cat Combo above due to not requiring the grave, Squirrelcraft can be used to instantly win the game with the same outlets as with the above combo. Racking into Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Mox Diamond, Mox Opal, Chrome Mox et al. Almost a year backwards, the very same shell reached the final pod of the first TimeTwisted Tournament. Retain enough life to resolve a black top-deck tutor and survive, seeing as we only have topdeck tutors that cost life (Total cost 3+[B] & 2 life), 3. Midrange preys on stax, so while the occasional taxing permanent or a, Things do however become much more problematic when, opposing deck plays stax, because at that point, the punching bag, and at the same time you’re the only one that wants to get rid of the now stax-infested board. Stax decks like Blood Pod can bring our combo plans to a halt with a couple of properly timed spheres or. However, , there are still ways around this wall of x/3s by using mana-efficient evasive threats, something akin to. With Ikra, your life totals will also stay at reasonable levels despite aggressive approaches from your opponents, but be ready for the occasional, : Leverage the fact that stax is one of the most difficult archetypes to play when it comes to politics: nobody truly likes being stopped from playing Magic, even at the competitive level where everything goes. By comparison, main-phase Ad Nauseams give no early forecast on what’s about to happen, and at the same time eliminate the risk of passing turns to people who might be going off on their turns. Contains deckbuilding guidelines and the current ban list. Here, Zur is still being taken advantage of for his ability to tutor, but rather to grab anti-combo cards such as Rule of Law, or Stony Silence. Learn who you’re playing against and call the politics out. Therefore, getting disrupted at the start by a Misstep would not have been the worst thing, and in addition you can be glad due to all the protected wins you’ll be getting if people start using their counterspells only after you’ve resolved your Ad Nauseam. They tend to greatly influence decisions, which can usually add up slowly to massive tempo loss without the enemy being aware of it. i've build this deck to be very controlling, giving up the early combo strategy to instead wait until the board has wasted all their awnsers, and then win with a few counterspells as backup. During the time Ad Nauseam was printed, there already existed a sort of “security system” that prevented the overuse of Ad Nauseam costing you the game, that being the white instant Angel’s Grace from Time Spiral. The Boogeyman by Rhystic Studies. Those creatures usually are something like Tymna, but also beefier generals like, This “hate the Naus player out” culture, while commonplace for a reason, is accompanied usually by the motto. Everything might change now that cards like Dockside Extortionist and the new Underworld Breach has made a big splash, and things might already be different in your particular playgroup due to rapid group-specific shifts. Below there are several tips on how to approach the current cEDH metagame, with the 3 main representatives of current metagame archetypes covered more extensively, followed by general-specific decks and some of the less prevalent archetypes. Ad Nauseam. Leonin Relic-Warder + Animate Dead/Necromancy: An already known reanimation combo from the popular Razakats decks helmed by Thrasios & Tymna, the “Animate Cat” win line comes to use in this list, albeit as a slightly more compact version as we’re not using Razaketh to assemble it. As the deck now becomes somewhat oriented on creatures that give you cards with Tymna and also work as ways to fix or generate mana on your Ad Nauseam turns, cards like Earthcraft, Skullclamp and Cabal Therapy work as very useful support cards for the whole toolbox. Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study, format-defining parasite cards that feed off of almost every half-decent cEDH table basically become jokes when you cast a Silence. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. And if they don’t, there literally isn’t much they can do to keep you from winning. Initially invented and coined by RiverMayCry who had been trying to make Orzhov combo decks work in cEDH for years prior, White Nauseam-esque deckbuilding essentially expands from the Angel’s Grace + Ad Nauseam idea to other forms of “life insurance”, which in this case is primarily incidental lifegain. Among black combo players in EDH, people often prefer playing Ad Nauseam pretty conservatively as an end-step draw-spell, which makes it essentially free card-draw for your combo turn. As to why does this kind of “pre-emptive” interaction work against the current cEDH metagame, all becomes clear with only a couple of card examples. The part that Rec Sage hits enchantments matters but Manglehorn is a hate bear on top of having a good enter the battlefield. Rhystic Study This may seem odd here, but the power of this card in a multiplayer format is relevant here as well. Discover (and save!) Anyone familiar with his record in the various cEDH tournaments over the years as well as his in-depth work on Gitrog will know to pay close attention to what he’s got to say. However, the longer the games and standoffs go, usually the more inevitability you can represent with your silences and counter-proof lands. . ... More thoughts on the Rhystic Study thing. If you still can’t get enough mana to win despite seeing 50-80 cards in your deck, finding enough to crack that. Next we’re going to do something that requires certain knowledge on what is in our particular list, and that is playing Crop Rotation with we’ve produced. You have plenty of ramp and plenty of 1-drop creatures here, and it’ll be easy to jam Tymna on turn 2 or 3. As no-one presented any counterspells to your Ad Nauseam nor to your Mana Vault, there are very few real interaction pieces that could disrupt us anymore. Now we’re getting to the more challenging part, that being the resolution of a main-phase Ad Nauseam with very little mana open. Squirrel Nest + Earthcraft: Another infinite combo when you have a basic land handy, Squirrel Nest accompanied with Earthcraft provides you with infinite tapped Squirrel tokens. As I’ve already covered above, Flash Hulk lists are arguably the fastest combo decks you can come across today in cEDH tables. 40-life-pools are already gargantuan in terms of aggro and burn -typed gameplans in EDH, so dividing your already mediocre damage between multiple opponents guarantees that you’ll be at best tickling everyone and at worst making them focus on you for hitting them. The reason why this lifegain theme works so well in the current cEDH metagame is that the surge of midrange decks has essentially extended game times so much that hitting people down with creatures is starting to show its head. To add to the benefits of incidental lifegain, the generals relying on incidental damage or life-loss to present a clock like, It’s also an important thing to mention that the White Nauseam lifegain theme, isn’t something the deck relies on to function. Or for that matter, a green card that says destroy target planeswalker, it's owner gets some token. In the most recent Vintage Championships, there were more Okos than there were Jaces in the top eight. Flash Hulk players are your some of your hardest opponents to deal with, but you’re fortunately not alone with this dilemma. This applies especially to Flash Hulk; while outracing a single Hulk deck consistently is somewhat possible, outracing multiple Hulks quickly turns the odds against you. All in all, Consultation players like to lean on the grindy side in regards to many cEDH tables, so most of the time you’ll be asking the questions with early Ad Nauseams or mid-game Silences. What we essentially need is more cards or we’re getting nowhere other than fiddling with rituals to YawgWill ourselves into pretty much nothing relevant. Broadcast Threat: Known threats that just loom over the table like a boogeyman can provide tremendous leverage over opponents. After the fast combo attempts are done with, you can try your own luck in going off, or grind value with Tymna & Ikra if the board becomes stagnant due to hate pieces until you have enough removal and/or protection to force through a win. Stax is not something that exists in huge numbers in most cEDH tables these days, especially now that midrange is seemingly everywhere. Retain enough life to resolve a black top-deck tutor and survive, seeing as we only have topdeck tutors that cost life (Total cost 3+[B] & 2 life)3. However, the more cards you see in a list that’s built to be this mana-positive, the less it’s about luck and more about making the odds in your favor. Are they going for a quick Ad Nauseam kill? Leonin+Animate Dead is not valid anymore due to using Yawgmoth’s Will, so keep that in mind (unless you’re using Leonin in someone else’s graveyard, it can happen). Midrange preys on stax, so while the occasional taxing permanent or a Deafening Silence can can stop our Ad Nauseam-filled fun time, their controllers are rarely favored against the numerous value engines presented to them by their opponents. That the card is susceptible to sun damage and that it can only be killed with a stake through the heart are also valid comparisons. We’ve got no real Moxen to really start mana production either save for Elvish Spirit Guide, and any dreams of combo assembly are distant with our hand as-is. ; Farm can just as easily win from a main-phase Ad Nauseam at 25-30 life with little mana floating, assuming you can hit enough of your mana-positive cards. JTMS was a design innovation. The particular list here runs three combos, the latter two of which have a couple of overlapping outlets: Sickening Dreams: a 2-mana sorcery that Earthquakes the whole table for the size of your library after drawing it with Angel’s Grace + Ad Nauseam works here as the most mana and card efficient win condition. And there you have it, the cEDH tournament boogeyman Abzan Farm in a nutshell. That’s why having an eye on what your given role is at each table is paramount to succeeding, especially when blue interaction is out of your reach. Hand-wise, however, it might look like we’re in a jam. This lends credence to the idea that Oko is not only on par with Jace, but perhaps even better. In similar fashion, the deck already runs cards like Ranger-Captain of Eos for more protection and tutoring, Overeager Apprentice for mana-fixing as well as discarding Leonin Relic-Warders ripe for reanimation, and even cards like Memnite and Krosan Wayfarer to work as ways to land easy mana-positive Culling the Weaks or Gaea’s Cradles on your Ad Nauseam turn. : One might think that the best way to deal with a hate piece is to get rid of it before it even hits the stack, but try being conservative with your hand hate here. Those creatures usually are something like Tymna, but also beefier generals like Gitrog or Kenrith, or even aggro-oriented like Najeela. If playing red, cards like Abrade, Fire Covenant, Wear//Tear, and even By Force can be used if absolutely needed. “Farm animal” in the context of the deck means any low-curve creature, around 1-3CMC that can land on the field before Tymna comes in and swing for cards in the early game, and which can also be sacrificed for further value during your combo turn. To add to this, Ad Nauseam has already been written off as a card one can easily beat without wasting extra card slots in their deck by just pressuring the combo player’s life total with combat damage. Essentially, we live in a sort of “midrange combo” climate, where the once hailed balls-to-the-wall speedy combo strategies get overlooked as only a meager sub-par approach to the now omnipresent Flash Hulk (to the point that even Flash Hulk isn’t trying to be fast with its newer iterations, not that it really needs to). what can I do if opponents start beating me down with every creature they have? Rack works with Ad Nauseam just as well as it does with Anje, and with this kind of hand, Racking for 20+ cards will almost always dig us into the rest of the fast mana that are still in the deck (unless we get super duper unlucky). The most classic effects here are the titular Silence and Grand Abolisher known from many well established lists, but stopping there would do our protection options no justice. But how can we utilize this kind of thinking in an Ad Nauseam storm deck? Apr 6, 2012 - This Pin was discovered by Michael McNulty. Rhystic Studies 2018-07-04 20:17. no, I covered that little circle when I talked about werewolves. Produce enough mana to tutor, play and activate Scroll Rack (playing and activating costs 3 mana total, so that plus tutoring costs), 2. Enjoy! While one could consider such a strategy to be indicative of a haymaker format, when a deck like Reanimator becomes the boogeyman it means the format is very receptive to new ideas, as its “unfair” strategy is easily hated out and thus can be forced to play a fair game against any deck in the field. Make a parade out of the ever-approaching doom named Flash. One question here would be whether to play Pilgrim or Serra Ascendant first. Games can range, depending on your opponents and your seating in the table, from fast combo shotgun parties where everyone tries to race to the win to the slower counter-war gut checks, and finally to the grinds through stax-ridden board states that can last hours. Produce enough mana to tutor, play and activate Scroll Rack (playing and activating costs 3 mana total, so that plus tutoring costs)2. You play Wooded Foothills getting Savannah as your land for the turn, and no-one presented counterspells to the Mana Vault that you topdecked. There’s also the factor of our creature suite that doesn’t accrue much value without Tymna around. The second hand has no tutors, but it has more than enough mana to cast Ikra as a Tymna creature, and also Ad Nauseam should we topdeck it or a tutor for it. To add to this, the now-ubiquitous Flash Hulk decks that are looking to win in response to counter wars now have to carefully weigh whether they want to go off in response to a singular Silence effect, or wait for the next turn that might never appear. 15:26. The sketchiest of keepable hands, but still keepable as it has a steady game plan. That is, unless they react quickly with interaction that would’ve otherwise been hitting your combo cards, which is sometimes just as juicy for us. This line is arguably the weakest in our combo suite, as it is weak to both spot removal and graveyard hate. As to why does this kind of “pre-emptive” interaction work against the current cEDH metagame, all becomes clear with only a couple of card examples. Rhystic Study This may seem odd here, but the power of this card in a multiplayer format is relevant here as well. The most recent TimeTwisted Tournament provided a prevalent example of this when people started putting their Flashes to the stack in pods where every opponent was running Flash Hulk; there wasn’t much Farm could do to stop it all from transpiring. Racking into, So in the end, we ended up winning from a pretty mediocre, . Even though early ramp is often preferred, don’t underestimate the clock Ascendant represents if you play it on turn 1. With Tymna and evasive creatures, you often are at an advantage against your opponents, as creature beats go through almost every relevant cEDH stax piece. Speaking of outlets, as both of the latter combos work very similarly, deck slots can be easily conserved by using overlapping outlets in Corpse Knight and Blasting Station in the Abzan list. Use whatever we can to draw our Scroll Rack from the top. As pure Grace + Naus lines are pretty rare, most often you’ll be using Dreams to win by casting a second Naus from your graveyard via Yawgmoth’s Will after finding Angel’s Grace and enough mana from your first cast. That means we’re racking away a total of 28 cards, which at this point is over half of our remaining library (50 cards after Skullclamping). Scroll Rack activation into: Enlightened Tutor, Fellwar Stone, Chrome Mox, Cabal Therapist, Thoughtseize, Sol Ring, Necromancy, Deathrite Shaman, Mox Diamond, Overgrown Tomb, Squirrel Nest, Ranger-Captain of Eos, Praetor’s Grasp, Sickening Dreams, Mana Crypt, Nature’s Lore, Temple Garden, Godless Shrine, Noxious Revival, Veil of Summer, Tainted Pact, Earthcraft, Arid Mesa, Wishclaw Talisman, Mox Opal, Assassin’s Trophy, Avacyn’s Pilgrim, Krosan Wayfarer. A couple of dedicated stax lists still see play online, the primary one being Tymna Tana Blood Pod. In that sense, what does a huge, beefy blocker or a lifegain engine do in this environment? However, as Tymna doesn’t need to connect herself to net you cards, there are still ways around this wall of x/3s by using mana-efficient evasive threats, something akin to Yuriko’s or Edric’s way of EDH deckbuilding. Regarding the Scroll Rack activation, you could say that it’s pure luck with how much fast mana one can flip into at that point, and that is somewhat true. It’s also an important thing to mention that the White Nauseam lifegain theme isn’t something the deck relies on to function; Farm can just as easily win from a main-phase Ad Nauseam at 25-30 life with little mana floating, assuming you can hit enough of your mana-positive cards. The power of “mana-positive” cards like, The words “Ad Nauseam”, meaning literally. Silence effects also help in offensively interacting with our opponents if necessary. If you’re up against multiple Hulk players, this strategy unfortunately gets less effective and your wins come down to luck more than anything. Again and again… and again. Cards that forced people to withhold any active gameplans at the risk handing someone the game now become trivial value engines, as their controllers’ ever-increasing hand sizes on your combo turn become mere semblances of hope that you’d somehow fail in going off. Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study, format-defining parasite cards that feed off of almost every half-decent cEDH table basically become jokes when you cast a Silence. This avenue of victory is, in a sense, more tricky to reach as it often requires Angel’s Grace with your Ad Nauseam to grant enough cards and immunity to damage, but due to existing only on the stack, it’s also immune to pretty much all forms of interaction other than counterspells when executed, also usually preceded by protection due to its cheap mana cost. In this issue of Lessons From the Fringe, we’re joined by special guest author: Leptys. Take note that Necropotence also is a high-priority target in openers should your hand be able to cast it, and has an equal level of priority as hands like the one above. By conceding blue we won’t only lose our counterspell option, but also most of our individual card-draw haymakers like Rhystic Study or Mystic Remora. A diverse community of players devoted to Magic: the Gathering, a trading card game ("TCG") produced by Wizards of the Coast and originally designed by Richard Garfield. But what if I told you that your deck’s speed isn’t purely dependent on how much mana your combo costs? There has been more than several dedicated Ad Naus combo decks played online in the past (Zur, Jeleva, Mono Black Sidisi etc. Most decks are satisfied by building their decks around this sort of Ad Naus usage, and it is quite powerful in relation to the amount of deckbuilding sacrifices you’d have to make. Has Oko finally taken the title of The Boogeyman from Jace? We also still have one in our pool and an open Savannah, so let’s see what we get. However, as the high-power tables get used to seeing 5+ mana open followed by the combo player passing turn without doing anything, everyone will be holding onto their counterspells which makes attempting to go off that much more difficult. All in all, a line above average difficulty that was weak to interaction in multiple points. More often than before, games end by combat damage rather than a combo, something that usually happens only in the most staxed out games we see so little of today. We naturally don’t have blue interaction ready in Abzan Farm, but with access to silencing the stack altogether we have the next-best thing. I see these kinds of situations happen almost every day when I play with some of the more experienced cEDH pilots, so I beg you not to be fooled. Once every color has good sideboard answers walkers will be less overpowered. Merchant Scroll $ 1.50 $ 28.00 $ 26.50: 1,867%. The original decklists for both can be found below. In short, most contemporary online games these days hinge on drawn out Mexican standoffs, where counterspells are fired at the latest moment possible, and where slipping in early wins becomes an exception rather than the rule. All in all, the once effective, slot-efficient tactic dedicated Ad Nauseam was weak against is no longer, all due to a couple of buffers to our seemingly inconsequential amount of life (all of which turns into not-so-inconsequential card advantage not long after). Now we get to the more common examples of openers: a lot of ramp accompanied by less powerful value engines and/or some interaction. When Tymna got printed, I witnessed more than several MtG players quickly realizing that the card could’ve just as easily been a mainstay general even without the Partner mechanic. If the game goes long enough, you can start threatening Ad Nauseam through Boseiju, or an Abolisher creature through Cavern of Souls to win on the spot. Oko on the over hand has been banned so fast form so many formats so recently his nature isn’t realy that if a boogeyman but as the elker of formats. It has had a huge impact on so many games, and I've also played it early game when the only enchantment on board was a Rhystic Study and been very content with the 1 to 1. I know you’ve all been excited to talk about the Zedruu lists that were sent in for my contest, but I think there’s one person even more excited. I would most definitely try a turn 2 Ad Nauseam here with 0 mana floating; the deck is designed to win from those kinds of situations as often as possible with all the Moxen and other fast mana we have still in our deck. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. If they would just print more answers to walkers in all colors we would have less of these problems. Stax decks have been the traditional main opponent against fast combo decks, especially back when Partial Paris was a thing. Depends on the table, but an early Serra can be used to pressure other Ad Nauseam decks, or alternatively ones that play an early stax piece to keep you from comboing off. A little bit more resilient than the Cat Combo above due to not requiring the grave, Squirrelcraft can be used to instantly win the game with the same outlets as with the above combo. When something is printed thats obviously pushing an archetype they usually print a counter (E.G. What do you guys think? 1 year ago. Ad Nauseam. To add to the benefits of incidental lifegain, the generals relying on incidental damage or life-loss to present a clock like Najeela or Yuriko groan at cards like Ikra Shidiqi, seeing how everyone at the table can be cut down below 10 life while you still stand above your 30s. The playstyle Consultation leans towards is consequently more on the conservative side than the storm decks of old – something we can leverage to outrace them with our aggressive tactics. Needless to say, this is fantastic news for dedicated Ad Nauseam decks like Farm which can double down on using life to fuel game-winning spells. How can you flip into gas cards every game if you just get a bunch of Edric creatures all the time? Things do however become much more problematic when every opposing deck plays stax, because at that point you’re the punching bag, and at the same time you’re the only one that wants to get rid of the now stax-infested board. Rhystic Study $ 1.25 $ 23.00 $ 21.75: 1,840%. However, because our bottleneck is not the outlet but resolving an instant that nets us 20+ cards, you can run a small suite of different, yet compact combos that you can use to maneuver around opposing hate. However, contrary to what you might believe from the first skim of the deck, you can do surprisingly much to interact with your opposition, even without blue. We have Skullclamp as pretty much the only reasonable option to draw cards, so we need at least 2 more mana to cast and equip Skullclamp. 03 Rhystic Study - a set it and never forget it source of card advantage, the Study can draw a ridiculous amount of cards in a competitive Commander game. Finally, we’re leaning hard on one card to win games, which makes us somewhat weak to opposing extraction and to people who are actively focusing on us in every game. There is still a Phyrexian Tower in the library, so we can fetch that and sacrifice Arbor Elf/Memnite to it for . The u_little_mark community on Reddit. Ad Nauseam, ridiculous mana potential and a tutor for pretty much anything you would need. I’m not here to talk about Gitrog today though; her popularity has gone, needless to say, above and beyond ‘fringe’ in terms of cEDH popularity. With the arrival of the London Mulligan rule, the option to aggressively search for your one-card combo just raises the odds of Farm being in its endgame from as early as turn 2 onwards, making it match speeds of singular Flash Hulk decks in early game wins due to not having the same card and library requirements in going off as Hulk does despite the mana cost requirement. It doesn't come down early enough to have the impact of a Remora (which can fix bad/rock heavy hands). You go down to 3 life with the following hand post-resolution: Children of Korlis, Grand Abolisher, Marsh Flats, Verdant Catacombs, Gemstone Caverns, Snow-Covered Forest, Swamp, Overeager Apprentice, Gaea’s Cradle, Arcane Signet, Imperial Seal, Elvish Spirit Guide, Cabal Ritual, Forest, Vampiric Tutor, Flooded Strand, Ancient Tomb, Exotic Orchard, Snow-Covered Plains, Crop Rotation, Skullclamp, Polluted Delta, Boseiju Who Shelters All, Dark Confidant, Serra Ascendant, Cavern of Souls, Command Tower, Memnite, Smothering Tithe, Animate Dead, Corpse Knight, Exploration, Yawgmoth’s Will, Scavenger Grounds, Regrowth, Abrupt Decay, Grim Monolith, Your graveyard consists of: Windswept Heath, Wooded Foothills, Ad Nauseam. Keep these small jabs with Ranger-Captain, Hope of Ghirapur and reanimation for them ready to threaten combo attempts and keep them on their back foot. What green cards should have gotten the axe before Oko? Rhystic Studies did a fantastic video on him, where he coined him: The Boogeyman. The new Abzan Mythos is a good one, but almost all of them require black. We all know Oko is completely busted and format warping in every format he exists in, but how do you guys think he stacks up against Jace, the Mindsculpter, widely considered the best planeswalker Wizards ever printed? Arcane Teachings, Fire Whip, Hermetic Study, Kyren Negotiations – All of these cards grant the ability “Tap: This creature deals 1 damage to target creature or player.” The problem with this is that most of Ian’s creatures already have this ability, making all of these cards unnecessarily redundant. If you’re up against multiple Hulk players, this strategy unfortunately gets less effective and your wins come down to luck more than anything. There aren’t many meta-specific cards I’d particularly recommend, as the combo package is pretty immune to any specific hate. Simultaneously, the deck does run some grave-hate for blowout potential (Scavenger Grounds / Necromancy / Noxious Revival), and targeted discard which works as premature removal, but also gives valuable information to the whole table on what the more quiet players are up to. The general lack of interaction in permanent form also hurts the chances of effectively disrupting other, occasionally faster combo decks, so in certain games you can get outraced. By conceding blue we won’t only lose our counterspell option, but also most of our individual card-draw haymakers like. Stax players play plenty of hate, and your discard is definitely not plentiful. Try emphasizing on those early game creatures, so that when the eventual, Stax is not something that exists in huge numbers in most cEDH tables these days, especially now that midrange is seemingly everywhere. In this article I’m going in-depth with the main themes involved in the deckbuilding of this list, and why it keeps overmatching the value-oriented midrange climate we’re in right now in terms of online cEDH. If you see that you can go off by removing one troublesome permanent, then definitely tutor a Decay/Trophy/Claim and blast off. But then you win. When it comes to your opponents, this might very well be a goldfish situation assuming everyone knew what they were doing. What if I told you that Ad Nauseam, as overlooked as it now is as the de-facto win condition, was never truly usurped from that position? The card has seen use in many of the classic Ad Naus decks in past cEDH lists, the main example being Zur, the Enchanter Doomsday. I am here about a non-blue combo deck, however, and like Gitrog, it has got some impressive results in prized online cEDH events recently. Fast Mana + Other Value Engines/Interaction. I’ll keep it brief: this deck has got some pretty easy mulligans, especially when you know what to look for. due to not having the same card and library requirements in going off as Hulk does despite the mana cost requirement. Tymna comes out on turn 2 or 3 depending on our topdeck, and at that point you’ll be most likely topdecking into more and more mana. You’re still lacking an outlet (Blasting Station/Corpse Knight), but one can be fetched easily with Tainted Pact now that it’s the only piece you need. Let the Hulk player know that you’re not falling for anything they might try to take the spotlight off of them, and let the table know that they need to keep their interaction up for those Flashes. That does it for the matchups against the most well versed out 3 main archetypes of cEDH. So, with Cradle and Memnite we’ve made Exploration to a green Rite of Flame to produce , which isn’t anything to scoff at. A good example of a “farm animal” in the current list is Cabal Therapist. Thank you for reading! Speaking of outlets, as both of the latter combos work very similarly, deck slots can be easily conserved by using overlapping outlets in Corpse Knight and Blasting Station in the Abzan list. allows for pure mana production straight into a total of 8 mana, which can be used to cast Earthcraft, Krosan Wayfarer, tap Wayfarer to Earthcraft, sac Wayfarer to put a land into play, play Yawgmoth’s Will, do that all again, cast Cabal Ritual & Memnite for more mana… essentially you’ve got more than enough to just win the game on the spot with the Squirrelcraft combo. Time to go into detail how this Turbo Ad Nauseam deck helmed by Tymna, usually referred to as “Farm” (courtesy of the archetype’s originator, my former write-up on this deck from 2018. , you might already know what a “Farm” deck is built to do: resolve Ad Nauseam ASAP, and win afterwards in quick fashion. The power of “mana-positive” cards like Mana Crypt and Sol Ring combined with the 40-life rule presented tons of build-around potential with the black instant right from the beginning times of the format. In the most recent Vintage Championships, there were more Okos than there were Jaces in the top eight. You’re up against 3 blue players, two of which have 1 blue mana open. Fortunately though, we do have a combo “extender” that Cobble has already talked covered in one of his prior articles: Scroll Rack. This doesn’t stop instant-speed comboing naturally, but a well-placed Silence or Ranger-Captain activation forms the bread and butter of disrupting half-hearted combo attempts in an emergency, giving Farm’s protection suite a bit of reactive interaction potential on the side. Nevertheless, I hope this article has provided at least some light to how fast combo is incredibly favored against the abundant value decks of today and how Flash Hulk is not the only way to go about it, as well as an idea or two on how you can actually do all this in practice. Even without Ad Nauseam in the opener, the Vampiric Tutor here would easily work as a replacement for Naus too, making this an easy keep nevertheless. Perhaps you’ve already guessed, but I’m not your regular article author here in Lessons From the Fringe. Jace is the boogeyman because wizards (and many players) was afraid to unban him in modern - almost chiefly because of how he "terrorized" standard and his then-strength in legacy control decks. Almost a year backwards, the very same shell reached the final pod of the first TimeTwisted Tournament. But how does Oko compare? As we don’t have any ways to gain life from 3 and no tutors that don’t cost any life, Ancient Tomb is out of the equation. If you’re curious for more in-depth matchup coverage, look to the. Grace also grants you immunity to damage, so while other players get hit for 50+ damage, you won’t be breaking any sweat. Here we come to the part where the deck gets is name from: the offensive, cheap as well as evasive creature suite that provide strong static effects, or sacrifice themselves for additional resources when needed, also known as the “farm animals”. Hello, readers. Consultation is not as much of an archetype as it is a package that is being pasted into every deck that by default tries to go fast, usually along the lines of Ad Nauseam, : Consultation players often like to play the game from their hand rather than from their board, so taking a peek at all the information they have access to and revealing their gameplan to the table is often a powerful move, especially when they have been relatively passive for a turn or two. For the uninitiated, here’s a pretty usual game state in terms of your board and open mana post-Ad Nauseam, but with some unfriendly flips to force some elaboration on possible lines one can take: Game state: Your turn 3. The deck does run a lot of already mentioned Silence effects, which similarly can stop our opponents in their tracks just like they can stop us. Cue the White Nauseam philosophy, one of the main concepts that Farm’s deckbuilding revolves around. However, simultaneously it only presented a singular solution to the dilemma: what can I do if opponents start beating me down with every creature they have? What if I told you that Ad Nauseam, as overlooked as it now is as the de-facto win condition, was never truly usurped from that position, here to talk about Gitrog today though; her popularity has gone, needless to say, above and beyond ‘fringe’ in terms of cEDH popularity. And because its cost isn't steep, it can largely be ignored until someone thinks they're gonna win, then prompty destroy the Rhystic. 1x Rhystic Study 1x Greater Good 1x Future Sight 1x Treachery 1x Sol Ring ... A few months ago, rumblings were heard of a European deck that was becoming something of a boogeyman to the format, known as Maverick. With one extra mana from Grim Monolith, all that’s left is to play Skullclamp, attach it to Memnite to draw Rack + one card, then Rack away pretty much everything that’s left in your hand save for Yawgmoth’s Will. That being said, Serra Ascendant often is one of the biggest beaters available in cEDH, and with evasion to boot. Same powerlevel in context, but considering power creep, if pitted against each other, Jace doesn't hold a candle to Oko. The Mardu version of Farm has none of the green Veils available, but reactive cards like Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast work just as well as counterspells and as ways to remove blue value engines or hate pieces.

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