I did a little testing of my Gifts build with friends yesterday and one thing became quite clear:
In other words, the value of a topdecked Thoughtseize drops precipitously as the game goes past the first couple turns. Facing down a kill-it-or-die creature? Thoughtseize is terrible. Just gained control, and looking to ice the game? Terrible. In one game, I died when almost any other non-land card in the deck would have been good. In another, I ended up with two Thoughtseizes in hand, just waiting slooowly for a real card to come up.
This is not to say that Thoughtseize isn't valuable, but I found it was such a depressingly poor topdeck that I'd prefer to just cede some turn-one value against certain decks (say, Storm) to increase the value of my deck in the late game, which is where i wanted to win anyway.
After Gab Nassif's topdeck to win game five of the quarterfinals at Kyoto, Randy Buehler commented that his breed of five-color control was built to have good topdecks. As I look at my upcoming PTQ opportunity next week, this is something I want to make sure I engineer into my main deck. That is, the ideal card, even one that's meant for the early game, should also be a solid late-game topdeck.
I never regretted seeing a Path, whether it was the first or the tenth turn, and that's the kind of thing I want in a card.
So, Thoughtseize, it's off to the sideboard for you.
Comments (6)
i wasn't clear on whether you're talking about a 5cc or an extended gifts ungiven. i'll assume gifts: are you U/w/b?? i've played a U/b; no thoughtsiezes though. very solid deck actually but the concern (for my team) was that correctly playing gifts is a "slow game" which isn't a good thing when the (extended) meta has a decent amount of turn3or4 kills (elves, teps) or when there are long-games against fae. anyway, we settled on mono-red...which i'm still favorable toward (as a viable tier1 deck)...for standard i thought i would try out a blightening deck...it's just not the best deck for this meta. it's like tier 1.5 vs. a bunch of tier 1's.
Posted by messels | March 18, 2009 01:01 PM
Posted on March 18, 2009 13:01
Yeah, I guess I didn't say. :)
I was testing a four-color Gifts deck for Extended (no red). Gifts is very much a slow-game deck, but I'm finding at least in my latest iteration that this isn't as much of a problem, and a long game is actually pretty good against Faeries. That said, I'm packing some wacky finishers that I'll probably talk about either tomorrow or right after the PTQ.
Mono-red does seem to prey effectively on a lot of deck choices, but I haven't seen any of them really make their way of the standings in our local PTQs, instead kind of knocking around the middle and victimizing some decks while getting blocked out of the top eight by others.
Posted by parakkum | March 19, 2009 11:47 AM
Posted on March 19, 2009 11:47
I (don't) hate to nitpick but isn't Path to Exile is a terrible turn one play (except against All-In Red)? So it should be a lot smaller on the graph in its first appearance and get bigger later :)
Posted by Thomas David Baker | March 22, 2009 01:07 PM
Posted on March 22, 2009 13:07
Honestly, I think the terrible-ness of Path as a turn one play is tremendously overrated.
Or, to put that another way, I assert that Path is good at all times. I'll quote Sam Black here, since I agree with him:
"That card delivers. If all their creatures are cheap, they probably can’t use the mana. If they’re playing expensive creatures, that’s a huge tempo swing. The card has just been unreal for me."
I have not yet ever, ever Pathed myself into worse badness on an early turn than the creature I removed. Even if the opponent's hand is one land and a bunch of Nacatls, I'm fine with it, because the one turn of not getting hit by that first one-drop has bought me time to drop a Finks or pull up some kind of sweeper. If they want to use their bonus land to overextend into that, I'm fine with it.
I can see Path being bad as a mid-game play against 5CC in the current Standard, but it is otherwise amazing.
Posted by parakkum | March 22, 2009 04:05 PM
Posted on March 22, 2009 16:05
I don't think Path is a good early play in Standard because people always have stuff to do with their mana. Even the freaking aggro decks are playing 25 land, so when you path their one or two drop, they're accelerating to something like Demigod or Siege-Gang Commander or a Cloudgoat Ranger with the mana to activate Windbrisk Heights, etc.
In Extended, the one I'm worried about is giving them mana to Vortex and play a guy. Vortex + pressure = bad nose most of the time. In general, I think Path is a poor early turn play because it gives your opponent a tempo boost, and it's card disadvantage for you.
Posted by Zaiem | March 24, 2009 05:08 PM
Posted on March 24, 2009 17:08
It's good that you mention Standard, since I've basically been living in Extended these days, so any thoughts I have on Path's goodness are completely inappropriate for Standard (and I agree that Pathing someone into, say, Ranger mana is just stone-cold terrible).
Giving someone Vortex mana is pretty much my sole fear vis-a-vis early Path in Extended. I don't even care about Path + guy as much as just allowing access to Vortex, in case they were stuck on two land.
On the other hand, I like that Path lets me come over the top on a on-my-third-turn-post-draw-upkeep Clique. Sure, they're up a land, but they're also tapped out for the turn and I still have two mana up for a play (NB - Smother would do most of the same job here, minus leaving room for me to have a play; but I don't run Smother).
Posted by parakkum | March 24, 2009 06:13 PM
Posted on March 24, 2009 18:13