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By: ztrman, Zach Raph
Jul 08 2013 1:13pm
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Welcome to SilverBlack Nemesis Week 8!

SilverBlack Nemesis is a series on Gatherling.com that is based on the Legacy SilverBlack format. Never heard of Legacy SilverBlack? Check out the Construction section! Legacy SilverBlack is a wide open format with a lot to offer. The buy-in price to build a deck is reasonable and there are a lot of viable options for what can be played. Jund, Madness, Mono Black Control, Infect, Tokens, Affinity, Hexproof, Red Deck Wins, White Weenie, Goblins, Elves, Counter-Top, Thopter-Sword... it's all here and viable to play! Legacy SilverBlack may have the widest selection of viable decks of any format. Have an old favorite you don't play anymore because it cycled out of standard or isn't viable any longer in regular Legacy or Classic events? Maybe Legacy SilverBlack can breathe new life into the deck! Check out the Construction section for deck building details.

Construction

For those of you who are still not familiar with Legacy SilverBlack here is a recap on the format: First let's talk about how the format is constructed. SilverBlack events are so aptly named because only Uncommon (Silver Logo) and Common (Black Logo) cards of any given card set are legal. Deck sizes are what you would expect, a minimum of 60 cards in the main deck and either a 0 card or 15 card sideboard. And of course, as the name Legacy SilverBlack indicates, we are using the Legacy card pool.
The Banned Cards are:

Brain Freeze Demonic Consultation Demonic Tutor Empty the Warrens Frantic Search
Goblin Recruiter Grapeshot Gush Mental Misstep Mystical Tutor
Skullclamp Sol Ring Strip Mine

Temporal Fissure

Tendrils of Agony
Tinker       Windfall


My List

This week I decided to audible.... I had a really cool jund dredge deck abusing the synergies between dredge cards like Stinkweed Imp, Darkmor Salvage, and Golgari Thug with graveyard return spells like Grim Discovery and Eternal Witness with the finishing power of Wurm Harvest. However the deck had some major weakness dealing with control decks or large creatures....neither of which I played against until the final round. Here is the list I was going to play:

 
However instead of playing this awesome deck, I played GW Astral Slide. For those who have never heard of astral slide, it is a 2W enchantment that whenever someone cycles a card, you blink a creature until eot. The deck kind of builds itself to a large degree. First a large number of cyclers, second cool etb effects, and third astral slides. I have played a similar deck in classic heirloom but for some dumb reason I removed the best card from that deck when I ported it to nemesis. I removed Stonehorn Dignitary. Stonehorn dignitary acts as a combat lock through astral slide, and when combined with acidic slime creates an incredible inevitability.  The inevitability was so great, I went 0-3. Anywho here is the list I ended up playing:

In retrospect my audible decision reminded me a lot of the indie hit 500 Days of Summer. In one scene Joseph Gordon-Levitt is visiting his then ex-girlfriend and in an absolutely genius scene the director shows expectations vs. the realities of his situation. That is how I felt when I audibled I had these expectations of pure awesomeness and the reality well the reality was 0-3 and looked a lot like this.


http://humourtouch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Expectations-vs-Reality.jpg


Round 1

I played against BoozeElemental with his BW Zealous Souls deck. His list was pretty ideal for this archetype, I would like to see some swords to plowshares over tragic slips and maybe some more hymns but these are very minor gripes. However if you look at my deck and look at his you will quickly notice that my deck can't kill fliers or really interact with them, based on this you can most likely infer quickly that I got crushed. I lost 0-2 not putting up any


Round 2

I played against FabioS with his elves deck. His deck was classic deck elf ball. He spit out tons of elves quickly and swarmed the board. I liked his deck list quite a lot, I played elves in the second Nemesis event and got first place with it. While again I have some preference of my list over his, the core idea of the deck is powerful particularly when pyroclasms are low in the meta. As it turned out my deck also cannot deal with board swarms. Again one could infer by looking at his then looking at mine. 0-2.


Round 3

I played against one of my best friends IRL, Duncan. Duncan has never played much MTGO before and I loaned him the 75 for his Naya Zoo deck that I had designed. The list was powerful and synergistic with pure power plays as t1 Avacyn Pilgrim and t2 Woolly Thoctar, or t1 jungle shrine t2 jungle shrine t3 forest Woolly Thoctar, or t3 Bloodbraid Cascade into Woolly Thoctar, or cast Woolly Thoctar at any point in the game, really Woolly Thoctar was the reason to play the deck. 3 mana 5/4s are very very good. The match up played out the best in my favor of the three matches. My walls actually accomplished something and my astral slides actually blanked large amounts of combat damage but Woolly Thoctar is bigger than my walls, and I lost to him being able to crush through my defences in long drawn out games.


Well that is more than enough on my failures.

People who actually did well lists or in other words, Winning Lists

The first I want to discuss is Pyro0734's BUG Shardless deck. The deck is a port of the actual Legacy Shardless deck popularized by Gerry Tompson on the SCG Circuit.  The deck is a blast to play with the fun of Shardless agent cascading into Hymn to Tourach. His list seems very very good and I have little to nothing to add on changes to the deck, just small stuff like Remand over Counterspell for the sake of mana and cascading. Also a 2 mana threat like Albino Troll over some other cards to allow for cascading into a threat. Other than that the deck is well positioned and powerful, if you have the money to splurge on some shardless I highly recommend a build similar to this:

 

 
The other winner was BoozeElemental whose list I have already discussed but will post again here:


Metagame Breakdown:
We were a little light on attendance this week most likely due to me being unable to host last week.
Legacy Silverblack Normal · 11 Players

Metagame Stats
Aggro 36%
Control 27%
Aggro-Control 9%
Midrange 9%
Unclassified 18%

 

73% 82% 18% 36% 36%

Final Comments:
The attendance was somewhat worrying considering consistent attendance back during Dabil's hosting time of low 20's. To help create a more consistent play environment I am going to be making all tournaments 4 round with prizes going out to x-1's and x-0's. I hope to see you all next week and bring a friend!

3 Comments

Good wrap up of the by Bazaar of Baghdad at Mon, 07/08/2013 - 17:03
Bazaar of Baghdad's picture
5

Good wrap up of the event.

Your Slide list needs Enlightened Tutor plus bullets for more consistency (and maybe the Thopter-Sword kill for better reach (over Acidic Slime lockdown perhaps)). Plus I'd rather play the Rune cycle (pun intended, increasing Plains count) over expensive cyclers like Tusker or little upside cyclers like Renewed Faith. Edit: Also Aura Shards somewhere in the 75.

I disagree, i think his slide by Quick at Tue, 07/09/2013 - 18:11
Quick's picture

I disagree, i think his slide list is fine, it's just not a very good deck for the format.

Enlightened Tutor is likely by Bazaar of Baghdad at Thu, 07/11/2013 - 10:50
Bazaar of Baghdad's picture
5

Enlightened Tutor is likely the best card in the format, and easily fits in his deck.