How to beat Paradoxical Outcome
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This deck has taken 2 forms as of late but both rely on playing a lot of artifact acceleration. This deck does not play much defense but plays a heavy offense to get ahead of you with card draw.
Playing counter magic or prison pieces is often not enough to stop this deck if it is performing well. Timing is a critical piece of the puzzle, you must always be aware of the board state and their hand. You can just lose to Vault/Key lock.
Null Rod and Stony Silence are very good against this deck but is by no means a lock. Damping Sphere has not proved to be a silver bullet to stop this deck either but time will tell. Hurkyl's Recall can be very disruptive to all builds of this deck if it is played in response to a Paradoxical Outcome.
If they get a Monastery Mentor or Blightsteel Colossus they you will need something to remove these. You would assume that their weakness is time since other decks can pressure them but that is not correct. Sometimes, they will just wait for you to act.
Question about this deck: how many cards should be on your sideboard for this deck? If you are a Shop deck then you will want Null Rod but that hurts you too. How do you play past that? If you are a Xerox deck Hurkyl's Recall is good against this and Shop but Hurkyl's Recall does not beat this deck. Playing counters spells can disrupt them but most Paradoxical players expect a good number of their spells to be countered.
When I played this deck against LandStill I would just keep pushing broken spells until I got there. My top decks were better than theirs.
Most strategies against this deck are to bring in 2 to 4 cards to stop them such as Mindbreak Trap and Null Rod. I am not sure that is enough to stop them if their deck is performing well.
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Non-artifact hoser like Spirit of the Labyrinth, Stony Silence and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben are of course very good here. Sanctum Prelate as well, but it can be a too slow.
For sideboarding again you want to look for non-artifact silver bullets like Eidolon of Rhetoric.
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Stony Silence is probably the single best hate card against the deck, but I've found the best way to beat the deck is a combination of early disruption and a fast clock. Even if you land a hate card early, if you don't end the game soon thereafter they might find a way to draw out of it.
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@griselbrother said in How to beat Paradoxical Outcome:
Eidolon of Rhetoric
The less card types something has, the more likely it's ability to stay in play, so I'd recommend Rule of Law or Arcane Laboratory over Eidolon of Rhetoric, although if you think the benefit of it being a creature outweighs is detriment, then obviously Eidolon would be a better choice.
Stony Silence is probably the best objective card versus their overall strategy.
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Like when facing any combo decks across any format there are two keys to success. One: Disruption and Two: An Efficient Clock.
The top disrupting effects are Stony Silence, Null Rod followed closely by cards like Kambal, Leovold and Spirt of the Labyrinth. Combing these cards with counter magic like FoW, Fluster storm , Pyroblast and mental mistep and adding to the clock with other cards that pressure life totals quickly will result in a strong PO matchup
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Manglehorn has proven to be very good vs PO in my Survival deck.
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I think discard spells are effective against this deck if you have access to them. Leovold is also a proven stop. The BUG deck has a favorable match up against PO.
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I think 1-for-1 discard spells are actually a losing proposition against Outcome because their deck is so dense with threats, and cards that find more threats. Nabbing an Outcome or something early might slow them a turn, but I have not found discard to be particularly effective against the deck.
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@revengeanceful Discard in general is not going to stop any deck in the meta right now. If you are playing discard spells the idea in this meta is to get information and slow you opponent down 1 or 2 turns then win. It really only works in Storm, and BUG and maybe Grixis depending on the build.
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This deck is very different from the one that were winning June 2018. The core of the deck is the same but the evasion is different. Mystic Remora main deck, Night's Whisper and some strategic bounce spells.
The style of how the deck is played has also changed, idea of running out all of the artifact early has changed. I see several players playing into the explosion of a go off.
How do you beat this deck now? Energy Flux is not as good. Stony Silence is good if you have access to it, and Null Rod is not getting it done without some serious pressure.
Is it really just taxing spells now to get past the deck? What the sideboard options? They bring in Karn and power him out, he is hard to deal with.
With Eternal Weekend right around the corner discussing how to beat this deck is very relevant.
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How about Back to Basics + Null Rod/Stony Silence, backed by some Hurkyl's and main deck counterspells? They usually run just 1-2 basic lands right? Null Rod is pretty easy to play early on in the game, and B2B isn't too bad to play either.
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Paradoxical is pretty easy to beat, if you're willing to play white cards (Stony Silence, Thalia 1.0, Spirit of the Labyrinth) but the problem is that it's impossible to beat Shops with such a build.
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@griselbrother The deck has gotten much harder to beat. The main deck bounce is better and they can wait you out. Without pressure the beat can just win with some interesting plays.
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@moorebrother1 How did it get harder to beat? Compared to when? I haven't seen that many PO lists that deviate very much from the norm.
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@nower1990 said in How to beat Paradoxical Outcome:
@moorebrother1 How did it get harder to beat? Compared to when? I haven't seen that many PO lists that deviate very much from the norm.
Compared to the days when people were just jamming 4x Seat of the Synod and Thoughtcast into their deck, is when.
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How about Chains of Mephistophles? Obv not good vs mud/dredge, but seems good versus most of the meta, especially PO. Could a BW aggro deck with X Chains/X Stony Silence/X Bob's/X Thalias/X Kambal be somewhere to start?
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@Serracollector Yes I have been thinking about something similar for awhile now. It could be a B/W humans build.
"Pitch Dredge is the worst thing to happen to Vintage this decade." - 2015 Vintage Champion Brian Kelly
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@serracollector said in How to beat Paradoxical Outcome:
How about Chains of Mephistophles? Obv not good vs mud/dredge, but seems good versus most of the meta, especially PO. Could a BW aggro deck with X Chains/X Stony Silence/X Bob's/X Thalias/X Kambal be somewhere to start?
That would be fine if you want to beat PO. But again, you just auto lose to Shops. I realise that's not the question here, but you have to have other matchups in mind as well.
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@rat3de Cavern of Souls would make this good. Also thing about In the Eye of Chaos.
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@griselbrother The idea that Null Rod or Stony Silence solves the artifact problem is not going to work out the way it used to. These decks and the good pilots that run them expect these cards now.
