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Wednesday, 15 October 2014

Updating Doomsday

Last night, I managed to get a bunch of Treasure Cruises and bought 2 Dig through Time from a player opening boosters so I could finally update whatever I could play.

With the new set, I think that the format has changed significantly, mainly because of how Treasure Cruise is trying to be an Ancestral Recall and how it actually does end up being played for U.

We used to had to have very incremental advantages to get ahead of the opponent, playing cards like Brainstorm and Ponder to extend their reach to the fullest. However, now, those bad players who spam those spells early can just negate that minor advantage and break past with Treasure Cruise. I used to believe that just jam packing cantrips was inferior to playing actual threats (so I'd say 4 Brainstorm + 1 Ponder would be better than 4 Brainstorm + 3 Ponder in a deck like miracles that did not strive on finding any particular cards).

It brings us into the part of Vintage that I could never really handle, Ancestral Recall. In the era of Classic, I had really played for these very incremental advantages and I was doing quite well but I was on the backseat after Ancestral Recall became the core part of the game that would primarily dictate the flow of the game. I had mine countered and the opponent could use it twice. That did not pan out well.
In the same way, I have fears that Treasure Cruise might warp the various formats to have this tension. Treasure Cruise is like a reverse threshold in how it functions and dedicated decks can easily abuse it.
The modern Jeskai Ascendancy deck is a very powerful deck that just randomly wins really fast and is fueled by Treasure Cruise. I'm wondering if it can be played in Legacy/Vintage but I do not yet have any ideas on how to convert the decks over or how they should play out (instants cantrips to outdo removal?).

In any case, I tried updating the Doomsday deck by removing the Emrakul combo (since everyone has some form of guard against it, it has been the weakest link of the deck). I am trying 2x maindeck Dig through Time which seems quite insane with its 7 choose 2 reach and a Treasure Cruise in the SB as a wish target. It feels quite comfortable to play but I guess I have to do this with a live opponent to actually have proper feedback. I haven't played much since the release of the new set but I think the new additions are good to go.

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