Against the Odds: Liliana's Adaptation (Standard)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- What are the odds of winning with the combo of Liliana's Contract and Arcane Adaptation in Standard? Let's see!
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Last week, we didn't have an Against the Odds poll because it's release week for Core Set 2019, which means it's time for a special episode showing off the new set. Don't worry-the poll is back at the end of the article and overflowing with sweet new Core Set 2019 options! "So what are we playing this week?" I heard you ask. Our new "you win the game" card Liliana's Contract, of course! While there aren't really enough Demons in Standard to make a Demon tribal deck work, we do have a way of cheating by turning all of our creatures into Demons: Arcane Adaptation! If we can get both Arcane Adaptation and Liliana's Contract on the battlefield along with four creatures, we win the game on our upkeep! What are the odds of winning with Liliana's Contract in Standard? Let's get to the video and find out!
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Games: 7:01
You can vote for next week's M19 Against the Odds deck here! www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/against-the-odds-liliana-s-adaptation-standard
Seth!! I made a rushed Mill deck can you please look at it??? www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/1194403
MTGGoldfish did you really sad Sailor of Memes @ 4:13 ???
if you're wondering why you didn't win at 19:19, it may be useful to do a bit of research on the "intervening 'if' clause" in Magic.
it's the same trigger on Valakut that checks for mountains. essentially, it only goes on the stack if you meet the conditions, but will check again upon resolution to make sure they're still met, meaning your opponent can respond to it between it triggering and resolving in order to disrupt it. pretty neat (and very much worth being aware of in order to sequence better plays)
TIL
This is the day that Sailor of Memes finally becomes an honorary demon. Frig yeah.
I'm so proud of you Sailor of Memes
He was always a beast.
Giving the new player his play points was super nice of you :)
Can you explain it to me? I don't know whats going on at MTGO
I guess first thing to know is that MTGO $1 = 1 Ticket = 10 Play Points. Play points are untradable to prevent it from being legally gambling.
The 1v1 Queue on MTGO is basically gambling though. It costs 2 Tickets or 20 Play Points to play, and when you win, you get 30 Play Points (effectively gaining $1) and when you lose you get 5 play points back (effectively losing $1.50).
Seth conceded because opponent seemed new, since they were playing draft commons, so he let them win so the new player wasn't just throwing money away playing with such a bad deck.
Thanks for the explanation! That was a sweet move from seth then
Wow good guy Seth conceding against the new player.
Shadow Titan an insult to a new player in my eyes.
I fight to the death!
CrispyCake Productions Blame WotC for making the new player experience so bad for this game.
CrispyCake Productions Feel free to insult me any day of the week if that’s what you consider an insult
I had one of the most fun epic matches on Xmage a while ago. I was winning and opponent was going to time out anyway, I gave him the win at the last seconds just because we had a blast. Its matches like those that are fun as hell that keep me playing magic.
I laughed so hard at "Zombie Demon Sphinx's down"
Dude, that concede to help the newbie was some pimp $*!t. Lots of respect for ya bro!!!
I must say, "God Demon" Is a pretty great creature type.
My arm
My arm
My arm
Summon up the power of the God Hand
You're a good dude, Seth. Encouraging new players is ensuring a future for the game. Well played, sir. Well played.
Lord, the blowout from that monored deck, how in the heck did that even happen? I feel honored to have seen that deck go off, I feel like it may never happen again!
Yeah, me too. Hard to even be upset, that's a super sweet and rare draw.
The reason the Crew didn’t work to have the ‘Win the Game’ go off is because of the ‘If’ clause.
The ability will only go on the stack of the condition is met, and then will check again at the time if resolving.
Since at the time it would go on the stack there were only 3 demons with different names out, the ability’s conditions aren’t met and so it doesn’t go on the stack.
Yeah, I was thinking it was like some other "you win" cards that trigger every turn, but only win if the condition is met.
“It actually kinda sorta works. It really actually kinda sorta does” -Seth at 45:19
Seth should get the number of whoever was playing the Monored Doom deck. They can bond over their love of building around jank rares.
Good guy Seth, not taking homies play points.
Omg god!! When seth play against mono red is the greatest thing I have ever seen or witness or anything to be.that brought the life right back to me. You are a god that I now see u for what you are!! god bless you!!! Also listen to requiem for a dream while he plays its amazing
Seth, you are amazing and seeing you concede to let the new player have the play points made you even more amazing. I know that to you it was just a small thing (the difference of 25 play points) but the new player can really use those points! The deck was cool, but this was the part that made me absolutely love this video! I can't give it enough thumbs up
Brewed up a version of this 2 days ago. My version was sultai colors in order to ramp into the combo sooner. I guess this is the closest I’ll get to an actual deck tech
the good ole cycle to swords to plowshares in standard
Edward Pang came here for that comment.
RCrowlzor totally good enough to repeat!
What?
The same exact day you put out this deck list i was building this deck... lol kinda crazy to see it, but hey saved me time specially since we took completely different routes on the shell.
If you weren't sure if Seth was purposely saying card names wrong before, "Sailor of Memes" should do it for you.
He says some intentionally wrong to troll (Bonded Courier, Donovan Bane, Jace's Eraser) but a lot of them are accidental.
Pretty sure all of those also started as accidental but he kept mispronouncing them because that's one of his shticks.
There's a healthy mixture of intentional and unintentional mispronunciations.
MTGGoldfish don't ever change Seth.
Sailor of memes sounds right to me
Couldnt help but laugh at "opponent looking for a... swords to plowshares" another great video Seth!
Nicol Bolas restrained by The Immortal Sun - so much (if only) flavor right there.
Yeah, conditional upkeep triggers don't go on the stack if you don't meet the condition. There's no window of priority to get a fourth creature for Contract before the beginning of your upkeep, so you have to have four creatures basically by the opponent's previous end step. When I saw a vehicle in the deck, I was unsure.
Seth, I think your best decks are the ones with 25+ lands and a lot of card draw. Even when you get manascrewed, you come back with Champion of Wits and Liliana's Contract, in this case. Similar things have happened with Brass' Bounty, Sifter Wurm...
Awesome!!
What a great move to conceed against the new player. 4 years later Seth is still the nicest guy in the MTG TH-cam Community.
Games: 7:01
Linus Westcott people just comment this every time I love it
I am planning on it XD
Props on scooping to the draft deck guy. That was classy.
Thank you!!! Exactly what I was looking for.
Glad you liked it!
MTGGoldfish yeah I was looking for the right pieces and have been testing for the last few weeks. I thought of SOME of the pieces you had too. So I was on the right track haha.
First game was sick, so swingy and fun.
thanks
U can't crew harvester before the contract trigger happens because untap, upkeep, draw is one fluid step. So by the time u untap u are already beyond the "beginning" of ur upkeep. If u were wondering what happend game two of match one. Modo actually did that correctly.
Rules also apply to scarab god...i often see competative games at the shop where the ub player will get the life drain and the scy bc the other guy doesnt know. Or i end up getting a judge on the ruling when im against that matchup and they dont know either
"Action Jackson over there." I haven't laughed that hard in a while 😂
I love the inadvertent save of Aetherborn from wraths in game one. Next level playing right there.
Good on you Seth, watching that second match I thought it wasn't fair.
My favorite part of the deck has to be the multiple instances of use for Arcane Adaptation.
Blocked by the imortal sun. Well it's not fully wrong.
dmany13 Cucked by the immortal sun
thats probably why Bolas is looking for it..so he doesn't get blocked anymore
34:21 "not great cards but they are magic cards..." lol
Seth, you are an angel for giving the win to the new modo player :)
- cOreGon out
I remember first starting on MTGO and being legitimately stressed out about losing (with more horrible, underpowered deck) because I was afraid I wouldn't have enough tixs to play more. If I run into someone like that I try to let them keep their playpoints if possible :)
Kudos to you. Just started playing MTGO mostly because of your videos and I must admit, I got horrible anxiety q'ing up because I most probably will lose tix :(
it's mtgo not modo you fuck
Contracts were one of the only real cards I pre-ordered. Thanks for a foundation for brewing.
Legendary creature- god zombie demon sphinx
Make it happen
Wow, this deck was impressive. Nice to see an insta-win card be good.
good is a stretch. fucking hilarious tho
Oh it is hilarious. But come one, this is better than a lot of insta-wins that have been made. The deck could hold its own pretty well.
I guess but good is still a stretch lol
Compared to the average, I would definitely say it is.
It’s good because the only non-cards you have to play are arcane adaptations. Everything else you play is pretty good so you have a decent back up plan of just being a mediocre midrange creature deck.
603.4. A triggered ability may read “When/Whenever/At [trigger event], if [condition], [effect].” When the trigger event occurs, the ability checks whether the stated condition is true. The ability triggers only if it is; otherwise it does nothing. If the ability triggers, it checks the stated condition again as it resolves. If the condition isn’t true at that time, the ability is removed from the stack and does nothing. Note that this mirrors the check for legal targets. This rule is referred to as the “intervening ‘if’ clause” rule. (The word “if” has only its normal English meaning anywhere else in the text of a card; this rule only applies to an “if” that immediately follows a trigger condition.)
Example: Felidar Sovereign reads, “At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 40 or more life, you win the game.” Its controller’s life total is checked as that player’s upkeep begins. If that player has 39 or less life, the ability doesn’t trigger at all. If that player has 40 or more life, the ability triggers and goes on the stack. As the ability resolves, that player’s life total is checked again. If that player has 39 or less life at this time, the ability is removed from the stack and has no effect. If that player has 40 or more life at this time, the ability resolves and that player wins the game.
Yeah here at our store we brewed up something very similar with contract. Also monowhite lifegain horses looks really good as well.
Yeah, I'm excited to play a lifegain deck at some point.
If you and Tomer had read my comment on your "top 10 M19 Commander cards", you wouldn't have whiffed your Harvester crew activation to trigger Liliana's Contract! Serves you right for not reading our comments Seth LOL! Once the upkeep hits and then you try to activate or cast something, the beginning of the upkeep has already passed. The beginning of the upkeep isn't a triggered step... it doesn't go on the stack, and since the only step before the beginning of the upkeep is a state based step, the Untap step, you can't even flash a creature in before the literal "beginning of the upkeep". Love it when jank blinds the brain to the actual rules of Magic. LOL! Again, it serves you right for not reading the comments Mr. Olive.
Tomer said "cast Artificial Evolution" at instant speed during the beginning of the upkeep, and you agreed Seth, despite it being wrong. My point is that THAT was the moment that you had it stuck in your head that you could interact with the beginning the upkeep at instant speed, and you can't. I learned this a long time ago by trying to get cute with my Felidar Sovereign's upkeep ability to "win the game if you have at least 40 life", and I cast a life gain spell during the upkeep to try to trigger his ability. 1) Upkeep abilities don't trigger themselves, they GET TRIGGERED by something else. 2) the only thing before the beginning of the upkeep is the Untap step which is state based and can't be interacted with. 3) Once something is cast or activated during an upkeep, the literal beginning of the upkeep has already passed.
I posted a deck similar to this a few days ago on tappedout. Opted to use nimble obstructionist, reassembling skeleton, scrapheap scroungers, endless sands to cheat back creatures instantly.
I like the recursive creature plan. Scrapheap not being able to block is annoying, but Resembling Skeleton seems like a fun addition.
‘It’s a two card combo’
‘Oh except we need a couple more cards’
It was really nice that you conceded the game to the new player.
Good guy Seth strikes again!
Glad that Seth took up the name that I gave the deck when he talked about the combo to begin with
So fun deck this time!
And concede to opponent with "draft" deck characterises you Seth as a person with big heart )
The game one opponent decided they much rather say they lost to scarab god than Liliana's contract.
Respect for giving that new player some points!
34:29 Looks like your opponent gave up on Jeskai Control and went on the GW Draft plan
24:50 Good guy Seth.
Fatal Push the Rootwalla was not a phrase I expected to hear today
Me either!
Make a Blood Moon + Sailor of Memes deck and call it Sailor Moon
Itachi21x or Blood Memes
I thought the starter deck was someone trolling. Could be phishing for play points lol. Still an honorable concede !
Sweet build! Definitely looks fun to play!
“I could win by attacking for 2, but I want to win with style.”
Gotta love Champions of Wits, the good ol' Naga Wizard Demon Sphinx.
"Blocked by" is strangely ambiguous language, since blocked also describes a combat status. Some planeswalkers can even become creatures and be "blocked" during combat. "Disabled by" or similar language would make much more sense.
While watching Seth play the Lillian enchantment, I notice he tries running it out too quickly whereas casting the enchantment on his second main phase would be more efficient
But it draws cards!
Exactly 3 deserts with Gonti just in case you steal an Hour of Promise is some next level tech Seth! (that you totally did on purpose right?)
Something that put in major work at my local prerelease was Chaos Wand. Would love to see you do something with it in modern.
That card is much better in slow formats like M19 limited. In Modern, the instants and sorceries Chaos Wand would be stealing (at 4 mana per activation) are mostly 1 or 2 mana, and the decks are so fast that giving up that much tempo will get you killed long before you can use the card advantage gained from the wand.
Chaos Wand seems really fun in limited and Commander, in Standard it's very matchup dependent (there's some decks with almost no spells).
Modern is the same way. Some matchups it would be insane, in other matchups (like Affinity) it would do pretty much nothing.
I still wonder if its better to play this combos with zombies and blue counter spells to get you to midgame. Just thinking if an oponent wipes your board you can play the new Liliana to bring back your cheap zombies.
Nice Arcane Contract deck!!
Would it have made more sense to play ETB creatures that makes more bodies to enable the combo? It seems rather hard to balance keeping alive and comboing off.
Lol'ed at, "it's basically splinter twin for standard" oh Seth, never change
At 24:40, opponent's creature says "I can be your angle or your demon"
Game play starts at 7:03
This deck is cool it’s almost like creature control
Like the good old days when brain maggot was standard
(From around 2:35...)
(If this was not standard, or if this perhaps was in your own format altogether, that is relevant.)
If you put four Fauna Shamans in the deck than you can put 16 - 20 one of creatures (it will bring back old memories). LOL
Sweet plan (for Modern)!
The fact that you can always name sphinx or zombie with the adaptation means there almost never totally useless
Seth the MVP, giving new players some Playpoints
Bolas got #Blocked
Hopefully the new player ended up picking up arena after this and is having a much better new player experience. That was a solid move, conceding to give him extra play points. I like to message them and see if they want to trade so I can hook them up with a few playsets of playable Commons and uncommons and such
This deck should have low drop creatures and mentor of the meek!
You can tell this video is a special occasion because Seth learned to pronounce "adaptation" correctly!
I'm learning!
Thanks man, helped out a lot!
Against The Odds and Budget Magic for life
We need a 2.0 version of this we can start the new season like this
I already build a deck like this, but with a Budget (it's at 70$) and with artifact synergies.
Sweet. I'd love to see your list!
Couldn't you have just crewed during the untap phase? :-P in Match 1, game 2
Price jumps coming in 3...2...1...
"GW Draft Deck"
Holy crud that's brutal
So when do we get to see U/R/x Guttersnipe where you just land a guttersnipe and then counter/cantrip everything?
I did that in Innistrad/Return to Ravnica standard with Electromancer, Think Twice, and Mystic Retrieval.
And baraal just for the giggles
It feels like maybe this would fare better in Modern. Blue/black creatures with ETB effects and Contract for card draw. It randomly wins out of nowhere with the Adaptation. There is something to be said for playing good creatures. Or go budget and play okay creatures.... mmm, Vampire Nighthawk.
22:39 looking for a Swords to Plowshares? Lol
CrimsiN yea I lol
Was looking for this comment. Opponent is playing an Alpha deck it seems
saw Apex of Power on the poll so I thought I'd share that 10 mana is exactly enough to cast Worldfire and a bolt. Here's a decklist I've been playing online for a while now, previously with Commune with Lava instead of Apex
www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1083992#online
as far as standard goes, you could build an Imminent Doom style deck?
I would not mind losing to this combo!
Is there a rotation-proof version of this? It sounds fun...
Second opponents deck was so classic
What’s up with the Bomat courier having a card with the new card back under it, it this for real?!? Thought this was some kind of fan art thing?
Cool pile I guess, but I still just want to see Demon Tron assembled the way it was intended!
We need more Demons in Standard!
Game 1 why didn't he get the win @19:26? He should be able to crew in response to the trigger and win, right?
EDIT: nevermind. Apparently the ability doesn't even trigger unless you control the demons. It checks on trigger AND on resolution.
gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=447243
Yeah, I didn't realize this :(
How can you submit a deck for brew doctor. I've been playing a really fun g/w enchantments brew, would like to have it checked out
You are missing the other half of the combo.
Would have been surprising indeed if opponent had cycled into swords to plowshares in standard.....judge? Lol.
Teferi do Notthing decks are exactly why WotC doesn't like to print stuff for draw-go anymore, and we're going right back into the plane that gave us Remand, Cyclonic Rift and Sphinx's Revelation.
Enough punts to fill up the punt poll haha
That was nice Seth.