This must be one of the best, if not the best, cube draft I've ever seen. At the end of the first match I caught myself thinking "damn, that was a great video." Before realizing that there were 2 more matches to go. The games were intense and complex, and you really showcased the advantages and disadvantages of building these kinds of "fair" decks in the cube.
There was a very interesting line at 54:00 where you cast Deluge for 1 instead of 2 to kill True-Name and Adanto, and their own Containment Priest prevents them from saving either with Parallax Wave. Then you can Teferi and bounce the Containment Priest if you want and the board ends up the same except they have a Containment Priest instead of Parallax Wave in hand (plus a Parallax Wave on board with no counters) which seems better. It does risk getting blown out by them having removal for their own Containment priest, though, so I'm not sure if it's actually a better line overall.
As someone pointed out above, there was an even better line of using teferi +1 and then deluging on their turn at beginning of combat once the last counter of P-wave was off
@@garagavia My point wasn't that this is the best possible line; it's that it's a very interesting line that has the unusual property of intentionally leaving one of your opponent's creatures alive for your own benefit. I've already commented on the instant-speed Deluge line but the TL;DR is that it is clearly the highest upside line and probably the best overall, but does carry some hypothetical risks in letting the opponent untap.
54:03 you should play teferi, +1 and then after the last counter ticks off of wave, you get to deluge the board, answering the wave and getting strix back later
think he would have saved the true name w/ the wave if it wasn't bounced w/ teferi. tho then you still have tef bounce & custodi lich, so could have worked out still. idk, I don't pretend to play at this level xD
So this is better if opponent has nothing, but it does give the opponent the chance to act with unknown cards and untapped mana. Specifically, here it opens you up to Touch the Spirit Realm saving True-Name. Opponent would have two unknown cards so they could theoretically have that AND another creature to play so that you can't get True-Name with Custodi Lich. However, that other creature would ALSO need to have haste or something to prevent Teferi from just bouncing it and THEN casting Custodi Lich, so most likely this would still work out, but there's definitely some fringe cases where you end up not dealing with True-Name somehow and then you're pretty screwed. LSV chose to take the line that was guaranteed to get True-Name off the board now, before the opponent got to untap.
Years ago when Bant Auras was standard(Geist of Saint Traft, Azorius/Selesnya Charm) I was playing against an opponent playing Frites, turn 3 Acidic Slime on the stack I cast Simic Charm giving all my stuff Hexproof until end of turn. He called a Judge over to ask how it would work since it was still on the stack. The Judge actually chuckled after he said, "Well you're going to have to destroy one of your own lands when it resolves. That's pretty funny."
In last game you couldve just played rafines tower on turn 2 and tutored for grave titan. Leaves fractured up for turn 3, turn 4 grave titan. Seems better than messing with mind twist to me.
Yeah Luis was really punished for just putting the island into play before thinking through the rest of the turn. Could have cast Fractured on the Batterskull turn 3 also in the scenario you described
This is an appreciation comment for your ability to say fractured identity with such speed that all the T's in the world "identity" are completely lost.
Oh man. Watching gonti hit lightning greaves twice 🤦 pain. That entire last game was pain and I empathize completely. The ooooold Ive drawn 13 lands, surely I wo-- I drew land.
1:33:50 Misplaying swamp instead of island turn 1 played a big part in that too. You would have had Jace turn 2 with the option of bouncing the Mystic to avoid him putting Batterskull into play or simply brainstorming which would find you the plains needed for Fractured Identity on turn 3.
i love fair decks in vintage cube. they're more fun to me than combo. i even made up my own archetype built around smokestack and/or balance + wrenn and/or oko. not really that fair but plays like a fair deck
54:40 I prefer playing Teferi and using plus ability. Then Deluge during combat. I think that was objectively a better line. (I have noticed you don't use Teferi in this way very often.)
Echoing my reply to someone else suggesting the same thing above -- this opens you up to opponent having untapped mana and unknown cards and potentially saving True-Name somehow (e.g. with Touch the Spirit Realm). It might still be better but it's not clear cut.
1:13:50 - why not pass the turn with 5 mana open and use confluence on their turn, potentially bounce the 5 drop and the 4 drop, potentially counter a spell, or draw a card, then when they are tapped out and hand is full, mind twist everything?
Crazy how the last game was basically lost because swamp was played instead of island T1. Lsv would have had tempo with Jace and most likely would have been able to get ahead of batterskull+skull clamp
The big mistake was playing island instead of raffine's tower turn 2. There was zero benefit to playing island there because you still have mana to demonic tutor, and you're not casting what you're searching for anyway. This lets you go for a turn 3 fractured in addition to still having the jace option, and it also opens up the potential for tutoring for a white card like Loran. Between Loran and Fractured you have two answers for artifacts, the most problematic permanent type (mostly because of skullclamp), which means you can probably take control and ride your Jace to victory.
Guys, could someone educate me, what are good ways to play LED in vintage cube? Obvious combo would be echo of eons, and use it with underworld breach on field. Am i missing something else?
there are somewhere around 6 wheel effects in the cube it combos with. Echo is the most straighforward but not technically the best. With something like wheel of fortune you can activate LED with wheel on the stack, get the mana and then 7 new cards to play with afterwards. It's not quite black lotus but when you use it that way it more or less is a lotus.
Any graveyard recursion with LED will always be absurd. Yawgmoth's Will, Regrowth, Underworld Breach (like you mentioned), etc. all become "free" when you have LED. Even going Yawgmoth's Will -> crack LED -> replay and crack LED will lead to busted plays as you got 6 mana out of nowhere. Then there's stuff like Reanimator and Dredge where LED becomes a hard-to-interact-with discard outlet that lets you follow up your play with something else because of the extra mana.
You already ordered a new mouse but down the line if you want to 100% avoid double clicking get a mouse with optical switches. Razer makes a quiet/work mouse for around 60$ with optical switches that'd also be quiet for content purposes.
wouldn't using jace to bounce the germ (instead of brainstorming) in g3 against jbro have worked out better? Yes they could bounce batterskull, but then they'd be more restricted by mana and wouldn't be able to kill the jace next turn (I think). Feels like it would have bought you some more time.
Hello, I'm trying to understand the play at 53:59 but I'm not sure about it: bouncing parallax wave first and then playing toxic deluge The upside is to draw a card from Teferi -3 but it gives back Parallax Wave to the opponent with 2 creatures in hand and opponent only a single card. Isn't Toxic first better? Granted probably not a shot at getting Baleful Strix back but at least the opponent do lose Parallax and the creatures can be played safely. I can see an argument for forcing opponent to blink Gonthi and Custodi Lich but it's a big tempo loss to close the game and a risk no ?
I'm not sure about that one either. It could be so that the opponent can't use the last Parallax Wave counter to save their Containment Priest, but that would assume they had the read on the Parallax Wave getting bounced and I don't think they knew Teferi was in hand.
If he used toxic deluge first, then the opponent could save their true-name nemesis with the parallax wave's last counter, and he would most likely lose to it
@@ThomasRichardson-lj1igI thought about it but wouldn't the stack be then 1 - toxic deluge 2 - parallax wave activation last counter exiles True Name 3 - parallax wave triggers for not having a counter left and is removed from the battlefield everything resolve and True Name dies ?
@@ThomasRichardson-lj1ig Oh I see, I thought it disappeared when the last counter was removed! It makes total sense then, thanks for the explanation :)
Not that I’m questioning the master himself, but in pack 3, pick 6. Wasn’t it better to take the mana confluence there? Seemed liked all the fixing you could want, even though Loran is great as well. Love the content!
I know in general LSV doesn't like the lands that don't have an option to make mana without hurting you, so in a slow deck like this, it could end up hurting you for 5+ damage if it's one of your early lands. I think he doesn't value the fixing that high.
Mana confluence is *not* very good in such a straight up defensive control deck, it's just too painful over the course of a long game (which is what the deck is aiming for)
He played some unfair cards, but this was ultimately a pretty fair Esper Control list that wanted to assemble a win through big haymakers. Mana Confluence doesn't go in fair decks, you need to be aiming to win T2-T4 for it to be strong.
The draft software is seperate from MTGO entirely. No need to own the cards there. To play the deck you draft on MTGO you do then need to own the cards, or buy what you dont already have (LSV has shown himself doing this several times now for cards he doesnt usually draft). Conisdering Vintage cube is the whos-who of allstar cards, most longtime players will already own the majority of these. Especially since MTGO is usually 10x cheaper than paper to buy cards and you only need 1 copy of each card for cube.
There were times where someone sent LSV a trade offer for a card they needed. I'm pretty sure he bought some from a bot after the drafting portion as well.
Because Mind Twist is great if you have it in your starting hand with lotus, channel, sol ring, etc. It does almost nothing when its turn 12 and you are both topdecking. Whereas Fable is good early and fine late.
Hare Krishna here: thanks for the videos, Luis! Q: how do you like Mystic Confluence in these kinds of decks? I thought it was a great pick-up p3p6, but you were on Loran vs Xander's Lounge. Am I overrating it?
Mind Twist is just clearly stronger. In cube most cards are a similar power level, so being able to select which one(s) get discarded isnt as crucial. And conisdering those high power levels the ability to get more than 1 card is exponentially better than a single card. A specific example I can name is a cube where LSV cast Thoughtseize and saw 3 different 1 mana red aggro creatures and essentially shocked himself for nothing since the opponent was still able to drop 2 creatures the next turn. Not that it was necessarily bad, but mind twist would have been way better.
"Speak of the Cheon" when he saw the Raffine's tower -- I laughed out loud
Not the first time I’ve heard him say that! He must use it enough that it comes naturally.
It wasn’t even the RB or BW dual this time!
This must be one of the best, if not the best, cube draft I've ever seen. At the end of the first match I caught myself thinking "damn, that was a great video." Before realizing that there were 2 more matches to go. The games were intense and complex, and you really showcased the advantages and disadvantages of building these kinds of "fair" decks in the cube.
Im overwhelmed with vintage cube content from LSV. Lets go
"Speak of the Cheon" bout made me choke, that was such a funny joke said so casually lmao
Touch the spirit realm getting revenge m1g2 for that brain freeze pick 🥶
There was a very interesting line at 54:00 where you cast Deluge for 1 instead of 2 to kill True-Name and Adanto, and their own Containment Priest prevents them from saving either with Parallax Wave. Then you can Teferi and bounce the Containment Priest if you want and the board ends up the same except they have a Containment Priest instead of Parallax Wave in hand (plus a Parallax Wave on board with no counters) which seems better. It does risk getting blown out by them having removal for their own Containment priest, though, so I'm not sure if it's actually a better line overall.
As someone pointed out above, there was an even better line of using teferi +1 and then deluging on their turn at beginning of combat once the last counter of P-wave was off
@@garagavia My point wasn't that this is the best possible line; it's that it's a very interesting line that has the unusual property of intentionally leaving one of your opponent's creatures alive for your own benefit.
I've already commented on the instant-speed Deluge line but the TL;DR is that it is clearly the highest upside line and probably the best overall, but does carry some hypothetical risks in letting the opponent untap.
Glad to see Fractured kicking butt and taking names in this one! Touch the Spirit Realm was BRUTAL though!
54:03 you should play teferi, +1 and then after the last counter ticks off of wave, you get to deluge the board, answering the wave and getting strix back later
think he would have saved the true name w/ the wave if it wasn't bounced w/ teferi. tho then you still have tef bounce & custodi lich, so could have worked out still. idk, I don't pretend to play at this level xD
that's a sick play
@@acommoner11 if they exile in response to the trigger then their TNN is just exiled for no value because of the containment priest.
ah, I misread your original comment -- thought you were saying to deluge on same turn as playing tef. makes sense now@@papids
So this is better if opponent has nothing, but it does give the opponent the chance to act with unknown cards and untapped mana. Specifically, here it opens you up to Touch the Spirit Realm saving True-Name. Opponent would have two unknown cards so they could theoretically have that AND another creature to play so that you can't get True-Name with Custodi Lich. However, that other creature would ALSO need to have haste or something to prevent Teferi from just bouncing it and THEN casting Custodi Lich, so most likely this would still work out, but there's definitely some fringe cases where you end up not dealing with True-Name somehow and then you're pretty screwed. LSV chose to take the line that was guaranteed to get True-Name off the board now, before the opponent got to untap.
Years ago when Bant Auras was standard(Geist of Saint Traft, Azorius/Selesnya Charm) I was playing against an opponent playing Frites, turn 3 Acidic Slime on the stack I cast Simic Charm giving all my stuff Hexproof until end of turn. He called a Judge over to ask how it would work since it was still on the stack. The Judge actually chuckled after he said, "Well you're going to have to destroy one of your own lands when it resolves. That's pretty funny."
Wow that match 1. A prime example of why cube draft with talented players is so entertaining.
Super awesome to see you put out a channel of your own! Have always loved your content a CFB videos, and am glad to see even more content!
Love checking in daily to see how our hero is getting on :)
That's the sickest, slickest Touch the Spirit Realm I've ever seen
Awesome matches for this draft, it is kind of crazy how the entirety of the final game was decided by how LSV sequenced his turn 1 and turn 2 lands
In last game you couldve just played rafines tower on turn 2 and tutored for grave titan. Leaves fractured up for turn 3, turn 4 grave titan. Seems better than messing with mind twist to me.
Yeah Luis was really punished for just putting the island into play before thinking through the rest of the turn. Could have cast Fractured on the Batterskull turn 3 also in the scenario you described
This is another case of many in recent videos where LSV gets maximum punished for hubris. It certainly makes for a cinematic viewing experience.
This is easily my favorite deck you’ve ever drafted in any iteration of the cube
This is an appreciation comment for your ability to say fractured identity with such speed that all the T's in the world "identity" are completely lost.
Oh man. Watching gonti hit lightning greaves twice 🤦 pain. That entire last game was pain and I empathize completely. The ooooold Ive drawn 13 lands, surely I wo-- I drew land.
Title is exciting, sounds like it's about to get spicy, let's see though!
1:33:50 Misplaying swamp instead of island turn 1 played a big part in that too. You would have had Jace turn 2 with the option of bouncing the Mystic to avoid him putting Batterskull into play or simply brainstorming which would find you the plains needed for Fractured Identity on turn 3.
i love fair decks in vintage cube. they're more fun to me than combo. i even made up my own archetype built around smokestack and/or balance + wrenn and/or oko. not really that fair but plays like a fair deck
54:40 I prefer playing Teferi and using plus ability. Then Deluge during combat. I think that was objectively a better line. (I have noticed you don't use Teferi in this way very often.)
Echoing my reply to someone else suggesting the same thing above -- this opens you up to opponent having untapped mana and unknown cards and potentially saving True-Name somehow (e.g. with Touch the Spirit Realm). It might still be better but it's not clear cut.
@@LunaLasceria Casting during combat does prevent damage for a turn. Anyway, it worked out so yay.
He finally said Cheon 😭 10:05
yeah. interesting to hear that Cheon was promoted to esper from uw 😂
LSV vintage draft videos go hard
Round 1 was fantastic!
@20:09 famous last words
1:13:50 - why not pass the turn with 5 mana open and use confluence on their turn, potentially bounce the 5 drop and the 4 drop, potentially counter a spell, or draw a card, then when they are tapped out and hand is full, mind twist everything?
43:46 lsv got fury 😂
such a sick draft, and you ordered a new mouse. buena onda hermano
Bouncing the phant image with Jace and saving the kill spell seemed a more efficient play but brainstorm also strong
Crazy how the last game was basically lost because swamp was played instead of island T1. Lsv would have had tempo with Jace and most likely would have been able to get ahead of batterskull+skull clamp
also think turoring for loran instead of mindtwist seems stronger.
The big mistake was playing island instead of raffine's tower turn 2. There was zero benefit to playing island there because you still have mana to demonic tutor, and you're not casting what you're searching for anyway. This lets you go for a turn 3 fractured in addition to still having the jace option, and it also opens up the potential for tutoring for a white card like Loran. Between Loran and Fractured you have two answers for artifacts, the most problematic permanent type (mostly because of skullclamp), which means you can probably take control and ride your Jace to victory.
Guys, could someone educate me, what are good ways to play LED in vintage cube? Obvious combo would be echo of eons, and use it with underworld breach on field. Am i missing something else?
Fine with cards like top, as well as creatures with abilities like urza or golos
there are somewhere around 6 wheel effects in the cube it combos with. Echo is the most straighforward but not technically the best. With something like wheel of fortune you can activate LED with wheel on the stack, get the mana and then 7 new cards to play with afterwards. It's not quite black lotus but when you use it that way it more or less is a lotus.
Any graveyard recursion with LED will always be absurd. Yawgmoth's Will, Regrowth, Underworld Breach (like you mentioned), etc. all become "free" when you have LED. Even going Yawgmoth's Will -> crack LED -> replay and crack LED will lead to busted plays as you got 6 mana out of nowhere.
Then there's stuff like Reanimator and Dredge where LED becomes a hard-to-interact-with discard outlet that lets you follow up your play with something else because of the extra mana.
Love the quote on Hamilton. You should sing more! 😋
Anyone know where I can find the list for this cube?
Teferi, Kitten and a Cheerio is a combo with drawing your deck. Pretty sure it works with Sol Ring as well.
Ftr i like that these are dual high level cube/mouse click asmr videos
Love a good old fashioned esper control deck
1:02:53
How does his opponent have mana drain when LSV took it in the draft?
Does the cube have multiple copies?
Ohh the phantasmal copied the gonti stealing it, wild.
You already ordered a new mouse but down the line if you want to 100% avoid double clicking get a mouse with optical switches. Razer makes a quiet/work mouse for around 60$ with optical switches that'd also be quiet for content purposes.
You know...im a simple man. I See LSV play VCD and I click.
I'm a simple man...I see this comment on every single LSV video, I have to respond
i gotta know... why bounce the paralax vawe before wiping the board and removing the containment priest when there's your strix under it?
If he casts deluge first, opponent can wave out true name in response.
9:10 bless you
wouldn't using jace to bounce the germ (instead of brainstorming) in g3 against jbro have worked out better? Yes they could bounce batterskull, but then they'd be more restricted by mana and wouldn't be able to kill the jace next turn (I think). Feels like it would have bought you some more time.
I was also thinking that fracturing the skullclamp may have actually worked out in either of the two games he beat you with it.
21:26 the difference between hymn to tourach and him, tourach
Great matches honestly. Very close
Still just loving the daily content!
Hello, I'm trying to understand the play at 53:59 but I'm not sure about it: bouncing parallax wave first and then playing toxic deluge
The upside is to draw a card from Teferi -3 but it gives back Parallax Wave to the opponent with 2 creatures in hand and opponent only a single card.
Isn't Toxic first better? Granted probably not a shot at getting Baleful Strix back but at least the opponent do lose Parallax and the creatures can be played safely.
I can see an argument for forcing opponent to blink Gonthi and Custodi Lich but it's a big tempo loss to close the game and a risk no ?
I'm not sure about that one either. It could be so that the opponent can't use the last Parallax Wave counter to save their Containment Priest, but that would assume they had the read on the Parallax Wave getting bounced and I don't think they knew Teferi was in hand.
If he used toxic deluge first, then the opponent could save their true-name nemesis with the parallax wave's last counter, and he would most likely lose to it
@@ThomasRichardson-lj1igI thought about it but wouldn't the stack be then
1 - toxic deluge
2 - parallax wave activation last counter exiles True Name
3 - parallax wave triggers for not having a counter left and is removed from the battlefield
everything resolve and True Name dies ?
@@halmyrach No. Parallax wave doesn't disappear until the opponent's upkeep, which is where fading triggers
@@ThomasRichardson-lj1ig Oh I see, I thought it disappeared when the last counter was removed!
It makes total sense then, thanks for the explanation :)
Not that I’m questioning the master himself, but in pack 3, pick 6. Wasn’t it better to take the mana confluence there? Seemed liked all the fixing you could want, even though Loran is great as well.
Love the content!
I know in general LSV doesn't like the lands that don't have an option to make mana without hurting you, so in a slow deck like this, it could end up hurting you for 5+ damage if it's one of your early lands. I think he doesn't value the fixing that high.
Mana confluence is *not* very good in such a straight up defensive control deck, it's just too painful over the course of a long game (which is what the deck is aiming for)
He played some unfair cards, but this was ultimately a pretty fair Esper Control list that wanted to assemble a win through big haymakers. Mana Confluence doesn't go in fair decks, you need to be aiming to win T2-T4 for it to be strong.
Wait how did you both have mana drain?
They didn't. The opponent used the Mana Drain from LSV's own deck with Gonti's ability (well, a phantasmal image copy of LSV's Gonti)
@@ThomasRichardson-lj1ig ahhhhhh missed that
Maybe Jbro also has a mouse that inadvertently double clicks?
When using this draft software, do the drafters need to actually own the cards in MTGO or do they have a work around?
The draft software is seperate from MTGO entirely. No need to own the cards there.
To play the deck you draft on MTGO you do then need to own the cards, or buy what you dont already have (LSV has shown himself doing this several times now for cards he doesnt usually draft).
Conisdering Vintage cube is the whos-who of allstar cards, most longtime players will already own the majority of these. Especially since MTGO is usually 10x cheaper than paper to buy cards and you only need 1 copy of each card for cube.
There were times where someone sent LSV a trade offer for a card they needed. I'm pretty sure he bought some from a bot after the drafting portion as well.
They need to have the cards but they tend to lend the missing cards.
How do you both have mana drain?
gonti stole it from lsv
Love me some esper good stuff
I would LOVE to hear why you believe that Fable is better than Mind Twist
Because Mind Twist is great if you have it in your starting hand with lotus, channel, sol ring, etc.
It does almost nothing when its turn 12 and you are both topdecking. Whereas Fable is good early and fine late.
last game was just over the top, drew almost exclusively lands, that should't happen, opponent was drawing gas topdeck mode.
Jacing Amy 😂
Hare Krishna here: thanks for the videos, Luis!
Q: how do you like Mystic Confluence in these kinds of decks? I thought it was a great pick-up p3p6, but you were on Loran vs Xander's Lounge.
Am I overrating it?
In controlling decks the life loss becomes a relevant downside. It's great if you're in a multicoloured aggressive or fast combo deck though.
p2 p1 thoughtseize not even a consideration over twist?
Mind Twist is just clearly stronger. In cube most cards are a similar power level, so being able to select which one(s) get discarded isnt as crucial. And conisdering those high power levels the ability to get more than 1 card is exponentially better than a single card.
A specific example I can name is a cube where LSV cast Thoughtseize and saw 3 different 1 mana red aggro creatures and essentially shocked himself for nothing since the opponent was still able to drop 2 creatures the next turn. Not that it was necessarily bad, but mind twist would have been way better.
@@Luckingsworth Mind twist is also a much better followup to Sol Ring. It's one of the best things to ramp into on turn 2 or 3.
Engagement
yay!!!
one of the best videos so far numotJAM
Nacl
get a new mouse man 😄
No TERFs on Gruul Turf. Trans Rights are human rights.
👏👏👏👏👏 amen
Dare I say....b-b-b-based?
Ooh! I remember when that guy Allen who looks like Nigel Thornberry was in the news for that!
Had to scroll down searching for a comment like this one. Thank you 💪
gotta balance out teresa nielman whenever shes mentioned, f the nielman FoF
first