“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”
Mark Twain
December and Winter Break brought me home for the holidays, and I was rewarded with a pleasant surprise. The weekly Legacy tournament I had attended previously jumped from eight and fourteen players to eighteen and twenty-eight players. The competition rose in quality, with a majority of players playing some variant on a netdeck. I chose to battle with Threshold, seeing as it is the best deck in the format. For me the most important matchup was the mirror match. Just like at Worlds, many of the best players play Threshold. They can afford Tarmogoyf, and it gives them good enough matchups across the board to just play better than the opponent and win. This means that the most important matchup for me playing Threshold was the mirror.
Winter Break was a time of leisure for me, so I spent a lot of time theorizing and testing the mirror. I started the testing by taking various Threshold builds and looking at the sideboard cards. At this point it was safe for me to assume that all my opponents would have access to Counterbalance + Sensei’s Divining Top at least after sideboarding, and they would most likely be bringing in some number of Threads of Disloyalty. I definitely had to bring in Krosan Grips from the board. After that I wanted some way to dominate the board or keep my opponent from dominating the board, which meant I was bringing in Threads of Disloyalty. All of a sudden I have up to eight cards I want to bring in from the board, and I definitely do not have that much to remove from the maindeck. These cards all provide more advantage coming from the sideboard than anything else. There definitely is not room to bring in more than eight cards for the mirror. Some players, like Chris Coppola in his article last week, do not even board in Threads of Disloyalty (or cards like Dark Confidant).
I found the Threshold mirror to be very swingy, so part of my goal is to ensure that I have the cards with the highest possible power, even if it means that my creatures cost four mana or that my I have Threads of Disloyalty instead of Mind Harness. Very rarely does the Threshold mirror get decided in the first three turns. Sometimes a player just rawdogs Counterbalance + Sensei’s Divining Top, or an early Tarmogoyf with a great hand. I played a series of games where my opponent went all in on a turn 1 Nimble Mongoose or turn 2 Tarmogoyf. Even if the defending player does not have Threshold, it is incredibly difficult to win off that advantage alone. There are just too many ways for the opponent to get a defense in place before they die. It takes a long time to hit for 20 damage with a 1/1 or even a 3/3. The most interesting aspect of the Threshold mirror is that neither player is strictly the beatdown or the control deck. Threshold is adept at playing both roles depending on the game state, and your opening hand will often determine the way the game plays out. I find it necessary to build my deck to ensure I can adapt to either role easily. This means that I constantly have to keep some number of flexible cards in to make sure that I can come back from a quick beatdown draw or plentiful counters.
The Threshold mirror consists of three different battles: board superiority, Counterbalance superiority, and hand and counter superiority. Board superiority is obvious; whoever has more power of creatures on the table is ahead, roughly speaking. Evasion is an easy way to win on board; Tarmogoyfs do a very good job of preventing either player from making profitable attacks so the ability to hit for damage anyway is very significant. Aside from just drawing more creatures, the other ways you gain advantage on board is by having bigger creatures or by removing theirs. The key here is that often the game can come down to gaining and keeping Threshold. You rarely win the game by riding a turn 1 Nimble Mongoose to victory, but it can be very difficult for you to win with unthreshed Mongeese when your opponent’s Mongeese are threshed. The other way to gain a lot of advantage on board is by Threads of Disloyalty. I board in Threads even if I only have Tarmogoyfs as a target because it is that back-breaking. Your opponent can be beating down with two threshed Mongeese and a Dark Confidant, but stealing their Tarmogoyf can completely turn the board around if your life total is high enough. Very few creatures can attack into an open Tarmogoyf and live. No other option is as good at stopping Tarmogoyf + anything else. I like having access to some giant flyer in the mirror; when you have access to Tombstalker or Mystic Enforcer and your opponent does not, you gain a second path to victory for free. Another strong mirror strategy is to look to Threshold’s greatest weakness: recursion. Shriekmaw already hurts Threshold, but when Volrath’s Stronghold or Genesis backs it up it can become impossible for the opponent to win.
The other way to try and win on board is to make your creatures better than the opponent’s, through equipment or something like Darkblast. I remain unconvinced that any of these approaches are better than just having more creatures. I would much rather have a Mystic Enforcer in hand on an empty board than an Umezawa’s Jitte. Mystic Enforcer and Nimble Mongoose can easily double block a Tarmogoyf. The only time I would want Darkblast is if its ability to kill Dark Confidants and 1/1 weenies is relevant enough to give it board space without being good in the Threshold matchup. I would not put a card like that in the sideboard specifically for the mirror, but I might board it in if I had room.
I devote most of my attention to finding the best combination of creatures because I feel that winning on board is the strongest strategy in Legacy. Not only can six power worth of creatures win most fights outright, but if you can protect it from counters and Thoughtseize, many opponents simply cannot deal with a durable creature. One of the reasons I find Rainbow Efreet so interesting is because if it resolves, it is almost impossible to kill by most control decks. Nice Pernicious Deed or Swords to Plowshares; you will die eventually. Efreet can even block Tarmogoyf! Having a creature advantage can render the opponent’s Counterbalance advantage irrelevant, and many of the creatures I like slip through an active Counterbalance. The challenge is to find good, durable creatures. Because so many people are learning to fight Tarmogoyfs, a large, evasive creature will often break through anti-Tarmogoyf defenses like Smother. They keys are protection from White, protection from Black, being recursive, evasion, becoming untargetable or removing from play, costing more than 3, or being Black.
Counterbalance is really good. Duh. Board advantage aside, having an active Counterbalance conveys a psychological advantage. Based on the games I’ve played, you can expect to blindly counter one spell with Counterbalance. Counterbalance is in many ways the most random aspect of the mirror, because achieving and holding it often comes down to who draws the combo and has enough counters to protect it. This is one of the key reasons to board in Krosan Grip; otherwise it is too easy to get lucksacked out of a game. On the other hand, you can lose even with Counterbalance superiority, especially if your opponent positions themselves well in the mirror.
It is important to know how to play into Counterbalance. In a previous article I got into the timing war between an active Counterbalance floating a 3 casting cost spell and an opponent with Krosan Grip. I suggest you go back and look at it again. I have another, counter-intuitive tip: sometimes it is right to play directly into Counterbalance. You might want to make a tapped out opponent tap their Top; this can force them to have to recast it next turn and not Top on upkeep. If you are more devious, you could play an unexpected two-drop, or even remove the Top in response. The other reason to play into an active Counterbalance is to make your creatures better. I have won games by using the opponent’s Counterbalance to fuel my graveyard for Goyfs and Geese. This situation is rare, but when you have creatures versus an opposing Counterbalance, every turn counts.
On the other hand you almost never beat an active Counterbalance by making them Top repeatedly on the same turn. Sensei’s Divining Top guarantees hitting more land drops than your opponent. If you save up cards you can beat the Counterbalance if your opponent taps low, but even then you have to waste multiple cards to do it. They can easily come back if all you manage to land is a Nimble Mongoose. Instead I like beating Counterbalance with weird casting costs. Even post-board most Threshold decks have at most six three-casting-cost spells and four spells at five mana. Most likely, Counterbalance cannot counter your spells that cost more than two. Game 1, paying UUG for Engineered Explosives will beat Counterbalance, and you can do similar things with more mana post-board. I actually used to maindeck Trygon Predator and Oblivion Ring to deal with Counterbalances (and Umezawa’s Jitte) game 1. With all that said, Counterbalance advantage is still a huge kick in the junk. If the board is not overwhelmingly against the Counterbalance player, they will often win. I always have ways to remove or win through an active Counterbalance both pre- and post-board, even if I only have a single Engineered Explosives.
The most neglected aspect of the Threshold mirror is fought in hand. Counterbalance and Tarmogoyf both completely dominate the game on the board, but they are easier to fight in hand. The problem with planning on winning the mirror with counters is that the first few turns of the Threshold mirror are the most random. Your plan can be to dig for Spell Snare and Force of Will, but if your opponent has Tarmogoyf or Counterbalance early it can be irrelevant. I looked at Spell Snare out of the sideboard, but it never did enough for me. Spell Snare especially failed for me; every other card I wanted to bring in for the mirror completely dominated the game if I got it running. Spell Snare just never seemed as impressive as any other single card. The other problem is that Threads of Disloyalty and Counterbalance already encourages players to look for differently costed cards to win the mirror; Spell Snare fights none of the trumps I already discussed: Tombstalker, Mystic Enforcer, Krosan Grip, Threads of Disloyalty. Many players run Dark Confidant to try and generate a huge advantage in hand. Theoretically an active Bob will beat the opposing player pretty quickly, but in practice Dark Confidant does very little to the board. Even an unthreshed Nimble Mongoose can kill a Dark Confidant, and a Dark Confidant can be extremely deadly to its controller in a multi-turn board stall. If none of the cards you draw help you beat Tarmogoyf, you can easily die or fall within alpha-strike range.
Okay, winning the Threshold mirror is important, and we know what cards come in out of the sideboard. No matter what colors you play in addition to Blue and Green, you have access to the same trump cards post-board, and those cards are just better than almost anything else. Once I realized that all my Threshold decks sideboarded for the mirror identically, I paid a lot of attention to how I built my maindecks. The maindeck was where I dramatically gained or lost points in the matchup, since we both gained the same advantage after sideboarding. I started with this core for every Threshold maindeck I considered:
18 lands
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Counterbalance
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Engineered Explosives
9 other cards
The singleton Engineered Explosives is there because you end up needing at least one. Otherwise you completely lose to a quick Umezawa’s Jitte; Eladamri, Lord of Leaves (thank goodness he got fixed); or Counterbalance. I have run everywhere from one to four general purpose cards like Engineered Explosives, but I have never wanted none.
After testing and tournaments, I am absolutely convinced that 4 Sensei’s Divining Top and 4 Counterbalance are correct. They rival Force of Will as cards I absolutely want four of in an unknown metagame. The 4th Counterbalance is often replaced in other decklists by some cantrip that gets boarded out for the Counterbalance anyway. Last month I started to come around to the 4th Sensei’s Divining Top, and I am now convinced. I am beginning to consider omitting the 4th Counterbalance equal to running only three Brainstorm or Ponder. You would have to be crazy to give up the edge it gives you. The only reason I can see not to run the 4th Top is because it is not at risk of being countered. The downside is even negligible because it becomes easy to lose the second Top in the library with 12 shuffles.
What fills the other 9 slots? I dedicate at least one of them to a large flier. I love the Tombstalker/Mystic Enforcer plan because it is extremely resilient. I was considering Hoofprints of the Stag, but thankfully I came to my senses. Unlike Enforcer, Hoofprints is vulnerable to both Threads of Disloyalty AND Krosan Grip. Heck, Hoofprints even loses out to popular maindeck options Smother, Spell Snare, and Stifle. For those cards I choose out of a list that contains Fledgling Dragon, Trygon Predator, Tombstalker, Mystic Enforcer, Rainbow Efreet, and Sea Drake. Trygon Predator, Rainbow Efreet, and Sea Drake depend on metagame considerations, and the other three creatures match up to certain colors. Out of the entire list I prefer Tombstalker and Mystic Enforcer. Both tend to beat Tarmogoyf in straight fights; Mystic Enforcer is immune to Ghastly Demise, but Tombstalker is cheaper and can shrink a Goyf or shut down a Jotun Grunt. Aside from color and metagame, the casting cost of the flyer you pick is both good and bad. The weirder casting costs are harder to Counterbalance, but they can be more vulnerable to Daze. The lower ones are more likely to come up in a Counterbalance both offensively and defensively.
Unless you do something radical like add Survival of the Fittest, the other 8 slots have to be Instants. I experimented with Oblivion Rings, Planeswalkers, more creatures and other options. Every time I ran a permanent or a higher cost spell in those slots, I had difficulty getting Threshold in the mirror and eventually started dropping games to early rushes and Daze. I wrote earlier that the all-in turn 1 Mongoose tended not to win the game, and that is true. But when your opponent can keep your Tarmogoyf off the board and his single Mongoose has more power your two Mongeese… you don’t win those games. It is okay to be slower to his Threshold, but you have to hit it at some point. I fill the first four slots with removal that can kill Tarmogoyf. My removal of choice is Swords to Plowshares because I find that killing early Tarmogoyfs and keeping recursion down versus Survival and Landstill is helpful, but Ghastly Demise could substitute. Not having removal seems like a huge mistake to me; it only takes being on the receiving end of a turn 2 Tarmogoyf on the play a few times before you choose to double your outs.
What I fill the last slot with depends on metagame and color considerations. I have looked at Stifle, Thoughtseize, Spell Snare and similar cards. The important consideration for the last four slots, in addition to fueling early Threshold, is to have an effect against non-Threshold matchups. At the moment I lean towards Thoughtseize or Stifle because they help me in other troublesome matchups, especially Goblins or matchups that can be bad like Dragon Stompy or Stax. Whatever card you run here you want to help you beat opposing plans, and both these cards do that. If you think your opponent is going to run Survival of the Fittest in Threshold and you do not have room for Pithing Needles, both cards help you. Likewise with Oblivion Rings or maindeck Threads of Disloyalty. For all you know, your opponents are going to try to win the mirror by starting Quirion Dryads and Werebear; you’re covered with Thoughtseize. Maybe your opponent has Wasteland? Stifle.
The last issue in the Threshold deck is whether or not you choose to run Wasteland and Stifle. This is completely a metagame decision. I have both been wrecked by Wasteland out of Threshold and seen someone fail to hit their colors properly because they had 4 colorless sources. I would tend to shy away from Wasteland at the moment because Worlds brought a lot of attention to Threshold killers like Dragon Stompy or Stax. Running Wasteland in your deck makes it dramatically more difficult to run Sea Drake or Tombstalker, so plan your deck accordingly.
Late last year I picked up Zac Hill Threshold-Survival deck and ran with it, but I came across some disappointing results. I did manage to squeeze Counterbalance and Sensei’s Divining Top into the deck, but I could never get more than 16 creatures into the deck. In a few notable playtest games, I managed to force down Survival of the Fittest only to lose because my opponent could Stifle the Survival ability and beatdown with Tarmogoyfs. More distressing was the general trend with many tweaks to Threshold that I discovered: it is incredibly easy to make a deck that beats Threshold the majority of the time. The problem is beating the rest of the field. Unsurprisingly when you cut removal and cheaper creatures for a slower engine, you lose more to Goblins. Huh.
So my personal build of Threshold? Right now I prefer White. Swords to Plowshares out of the maindeck is incredibly good, and no one seems prepared for Worship post-board. For a time I was enamored of Patrick Chapin four-color build of Threshold, until I started dropping games to Dragon Stompy because I had zero basics. Personally I would rather have fliers and more removal rather than Dark Confidant. Here is the build I have in my gauntlet:
4 Flooded Strand
2 Windswept Heath
2 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Forest
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Mystic Enforcer
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Counterbalance
4 Ponder
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Stifle
I’m not 100% happy with this decklist. I would love to get another flier in, and I am not unconvinced that 1 Engineered Explosives is enough. This list is also very tight; I have difficulty sideboarding the right number of cards. Engineered Explosives definitely comes out, but I have a problem knowing exactly know many Swords to Plowshares and Stifle to trim to get the right number of Grips and Threads for the opposing deck.
As a parting thought, I have been thinking a lot about Declaration of Naught. It seems like the kind of card, like Pithing Needle, that has a lot of marginal utility against a lot of decks. The difference is that Declaration of Naught has the power to completely shut down some decks. I really want to consider it for the sideboard because it is an asymmetrical Meddling Mage. Boarding into Meddling Mage naming Tarmogoyf is rather poor in the mirror since it has the potential to completely wreck you if you draw too many. Declaration of Naught does not suffer that problem. If only it didn’t cost two and have to come down before the card you’re stopping…