Has anyone tried Curie, Emergent Intelligence.
As an old school Ophidian player, I would love to get Curie working, either in Dressnought, alongside equipment, or in Affinity.
Perhaps it could work in a Monoblue Dressnought list alongside Tishana's Tidebinder, Ancient Tomb, Urza’s Saga, Lavaspur Boots and Misdirection…
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Tishana's Tidebinder
3 Curie, Emergent Intelligence
2 Delver of Secrets
1 Hullbreacher
1 Murktide Regent
1 Brazen Borrower
1 Lórien Revealed
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Stifle
4 Force of Will
2 Daze
1 Misdirection
2 Lavaspur Boots
4 Dress Down
12 Island
1 Otawara, Soaring City
3 Ancient Tomb
3 Urza’s Saga
I found Curie impressive, even when not doing the thing.
But ultimately nothing really works with it, the best creatures aren't artifacts (shadow) and the best artifacts are to expensive (etched monstrosity) outside of dreadnought
E: master of etherium might be another in the sweet spot
Phyrexian Soulgorger, Lupine Prototype and Vantress Gargoyle would "work". But there's no reason to try to make Curie "work". 7x Dreadnought should be enough.
I think Tishana has already proven too slow for Legacy.
Monoblue could work as
//Creatures:
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
2 Curie, Emergent Intelligence
3 Murktide Regent
2 Brazen Borrower
More Murktides to have a secondary threat. Borrower to answer prison pieces in mono U.
But there's no reason to force yourself into mono U. White adds removal, which makes it much easier for Curie to connect in a control-type Ophidian role.
Last edited by FTW; 04-25-2024 at 09:58 AM.
Those cards don't work because Curie doesn't just copy the P/T it also copies the abilities you're trying to avoid.
Vantress Gargoyle would work, because you can activate Curie after declaring attackers (can attack) but before blockers (gains flying). Then you draw 5, so it can block and mill until it can attack again.
But 7 Dreadnought is enough. Curie doesn't need another creature to combo with.
Curie is a stifle more than a Dreadnought, so I would want a second card to combo with it
Curie is more a Standstill/EI/Sylvan. Proactive 2cmc draw. It doesn't need to combo. It's Ophidian. It draws cards, stalls attackers, or draws out removal.
The Dreadnought combo is just a bonus - if left alone it can be haste 12/12 draw 12. Dreadnought + Saga is enough ways to set up that combo.
Ophidian mode is easier to use in a controlling UW build with removal.
Not quite. Curie is a card that must shrink your hand to get on-board, and then it likely does not draw any extra cards b/c of Karkas or Maze or kill spell or simple block.Originally Posted by FTW
After that you need to shrink hand by a further 2 cards to make a Nought to activate Curie on. You don't have a hand left to be controlling with. What you're describing here is being more midrange with Curie...but the point of midrange is to spam every card drawn, which only works with mono-1-card combos.
You can cut out a lot of steps and vulnerabilities by using a JVP or FailWhale or FailDancer. It is also notable that the entire effect of copy to counter removal is printed on Mycosynth, which can chose a different mode of Fiery Islet imitation with any GY hate trinket copying.
There are better and safer ways to do the Curie thing. Getting a copy-to-counter-removal effect online will convert more undecided games into a win than a draw 12 after successfully copying and hitting with a 12/12. The draw 12 is winmore, and while Ophidian'ing would get you to the wonmore point quicker, you have to have a ton of things go right. Delver decks have run this simulation already with FailWhale and FailDancer.
1 card, right?
Curie activation is instant speed. No Stifle needed.
If opponent ever taps out or you resolve Teferi, you go:
1 - Dreadnought
1U: Curie becomes hasteNought, attack for 12, draw 12 -> game win
Mycosynth does the copy to counter removal better but can't make hasteNought or make 1 attack winning.
You can add pressure passively by playing Saga, making Constructs, threatening 12/12 haste.
Therefore opponent must either:
a) kill Curie first (drew out removal spell from future Nought)
b) never tap out
Pressure mana further with Stifle + Wasteland and opponent is giving up major tempo by not casting spells and not attacking (leaving creature to block Ophidian). So they probably trade with Curie immediately, otherwise it costs them too much tempo to manage.
The potential to convert wins comes from trading with removal spells on Ophidian mode, fogging attackers (putting them on defense), and only needing 1 haste attack to decide a game instead of the usual 2 non-haste (sorcery interaction).
It may not be the most reliable draw engine but it seems to add value.
So if you go Dreadnought -> Curie copy, then you're dead to 1x removal spell (which they probably have in hand if they can block a 1/3 endlessly).
Concerning 1-shot Dreadnought, it is quite lethal in UR. 2-shot Dreadnought is a phenomenon specific to decks without modal removal and without proactive 1-drops on par with DRC.
While a 2-shot build can get around that problem by drawing 12 off a single hit...it assumes the opponent is either: fairly incompetent or unlucky, or unable to take a hit for 12 from Nought - such that they are unable to stop you from attacking with a 1/3 alongside a non-summoning sick 12/12. The trick of attacking 1/3 with 12/12 into countering their removal + I still have a 12/12 with draw 12 is heavily reliant on them not having 3 blocking power with a single kill spell in hand.
^These situations force you to act first, which is where it's going to go wrong....and as you set it all up, you lose a lot of hand size [i.e. control]. This is a jank problem, and you can't really count on getting them b/c they're on Leyline Binding rather than Ending.
There's a lot of creatures out there which, if you just untap with them, will access value that works with Dreadnought - and they don't require this much prep work/setup.
---
Unlike Standstill, Curie doesn't attack on a different axis. You had a dies to removal problem, and with Curie you still die to removal and you overload on slots that help Curie work as Ophidian...but those kill spells impede a Dreadnought plan. When Standstill provides quantity, we're drawing a higher %age of Dreadnought tech pieces.
No it isn't?
If they have "a single kill spell" and you counter their removal, you win the game.
If they have 3+ blocking power AND a removal AND mana open AND you don't have a counter AND you don't have tefeiri AND you have any other sorts of protection, maybe you shouldn't play dreadnought unless you're facing lethal?
I am not saying Curie should be played (I don't know), just trying to match the communication style.
That's quite the feat with 3 cards already discarded to present a 12/12 and a 1/3, and playing a land per turn. Where'd that hand size come from, that still has all the cards you need?
Remember always that these Stiflenought decks make their guy at sorcery speed, and pass the turn due to summoning sickness. The Stiflenought decks pair this with not being able to tempo a life total, so opponent gets another turn if they elect to pay 12 life. What's important here is that the opponent's hand size trends up while yours trends down, so it's quite the feat to have a residual hand that's better than theirs. Given how many untaps you're gifting the opponent, you're not going to "get them" b/c they don't have mana up.
Curie does not solve this problem, but rather makes the hand size disparity problem worse. The opponent will probably have at least an X/2 dude and just be able to sit there waiting for you to blink first. We can list off UW cards that counter their kill spell, have a PW passive, or kill their blocker...but the issue is that your deck isn't particularly effective at having or drawing these cards through the Dreadnought package stuff. You're tripping over Dreadnought pieces while trying to unlock Ophidian draws and tripping over 1-for-1s when trying to Dreadnought. In both cases the opponent just has to play and protect kill spells, regardless of which path you choose. If you get to the point of the game that you can unite Curie and Dreadnought plans, the draw 12 is likely not needed to win.
There's no shortage of printed creatures that generate value if you untap with them, but across the history of legacy the only ones that worked were Dreadhorde and Ragavan. The runners up*, again, are JVP (no combat needed), FailWhale (declare attack), and FailDancer (unblockable). Note how these are not 1/3s without any combat keywords/text to help put a damage on a player so that they can draw a card.
*Dark Confidant is specifically excluded due to non-blue + unplayability issues vs Wrenn and then Bowmancer, but again, doesn't need a combat step.
What you really need to be asking is how Curie wins an undecided game. These undecided games should be representative; i.e. without requiring the opponent to savagely misplay, and without relying on the opponent to draw under average. If Curie as Ophidian is just crushing it by itself, other not-Dreadnought decks made of mono-1-card-combos would exist. So it's either the ability to copy-to-counter-removal or the draw 12 supercombo (which we've already identified as winmore in games that are already won). So it's the copying-to-counter-removal; let me tell you about Mycosynth. You're discarding lands to the table anyways, so if you can put the copy effect on a card you were playing anyways, it turns out that you're addressing the hand size disparity issue.
Maybe that's where the disparity of views come from: you only need one card out, curie. You only play 12/12 if needed. Ophidian can win alone against noncreature decks. Creatures decks have to either kill curie, or at least realistically seeming able to do so. Tapping out make them vulnerable to 12/12 haste trample draw 12. Curie is a sort of stifle on steroids.
Still not saying that it should be played in Uw dreadnought, just to have the arguments fair. It is probably great vs some decks, and an immediate side out against others.
PS: real names of cards rather than nicknames would be great, there are a number of sentences I have no clue what you're talking about.
Faildancer is Mercurial Spelldancer, Failwhale is Heavenly Whale. The most important thing about these cards is the abundant amount of data out there highlighting their spectacular failure - and then recognizing how much more likely they (and JVP) are to generate value, such that the opponent is the one forced to blink first. Ophidian, particularly without credible 1-drop threats to divert removal, is not going to replace itself nor generate overt CA in the average game of legacy - if that's your plan, you need a different plan.
The issue with Stiflenought decks is that they can't get past kill spells. Going all-in on Curie (which kills your Dreadnought to exile) doesn't solve this problem...and unlike the other untap for value 2-drops, Curie does not threaten CA vs any player with a blocker/Maze/Karakas etc. To "get got" by Curie for 12, your opponent needs to be either inept or unlucky or both (and the inept requirement is harder to find the longer a Swiss goes).
Concerning combo decks, tapping out at sorcery speed for a 2 drop [not-hatebear] vs combo is one of the most reproducible ways to lose this format has ever seen. Remember that Ragavan made a 3rd mana and they got there with DHA b/c they could profitably play Daze and thus might survive a YOLO-tapout. Playing a deck bereft of 1 drops and making summoning sick fatties that give opponents untap + draw + land drop, does not lead to Daze hitting key spells.
Thanks for the cards names!
I think spelldancer is clearly worse: dies to bowmaster, requires you to play 3 spells to do anything. Heavenly whale, wouldn't it be playable if Murktide Regent wasn't just better?
Also, none of them threatens one-shot kill? I think the most apt comparison is blighted agent:as frail as it gets, but a threat you cannot ignore.
Note as well that blockers work only against the ophidian side of the card, not against one shot kill.
I might be very wrong, I don't play the deck.
For anyone still confused that no such card exists, the real real name is Ethereal Forager
If you think Stifle + Dreadnought is a playable line to win a game of Legacy, then I have no clue how you don't think Curie + Dreadnought is also a playable line to win a game of legacy. The difference is 3 mana, but you can leverage the Curie (stifle) before you go off.
If you exile Dreadnought to curie and Curie is removed how is that any different than if you stifled dreadnought and it's removed? Vs Counter magic?
The reason not to play Curie/Nought is because a) 3 extra mana makes you 'telegraph' it, and B) Stifle does more work than Curie without dreadnought AND you don't have room for both.
And with A) you need to weigh Curie's value as just an ophidian, how much value do you get from running it out ahead of time to help break up 5 mana into 3, and I was surprised by how well a 2 mana ophidian was performing when I played it [sample size n=3 games].
And with B, you can run both cards. Which is why I'm so desperate for a second Curie target, so much as even an artifact 2/2 would do wonders.
Glad to see others discussing this too!
Good points. Curie is a less reliable draw engine than Standstill or EI, even JVP or "FailWhale". But that doesn't make it unplayable. That makes Scroll Thief unplayable. Thief + combo piece might not be.
Stifle+Dreadnought has the same 2-for-1 risk. Curie's no riskier. But the potential payoff is higher. You get a 1-shot HasteNought (draw 12 = win usually) instead of a summon sick 2-shot. It reduces their window of interaction.
All you need is:
-Curie on board from previous turn
-2U mana
-either: opponent tapped out, opponent out of removal, protection in hand, or Teferi in play
-No Bowmaster in play
They can have blockers, as long as a 12/12 tramples through them. You can pressure their mana with Stifle+Wasteland or try to resolve protection like Teferi/LQR. If you ever catch them open, you deploy a 1-mana card from hand and win the game with HasteNought. Or you can play Urza's Sagas, make constructs, and passively threaten a Hastenought. If they aren't open, Saga gets a cantrip instead of Nought. You aren't forced to play into their open removal.
You've conflated 2 different scenarios.
If going for the surprise HasteNought that can be blown out by removal, it's only 2 cards (Curie + Nought), maybe free from Saga, so there's a higher chance of having other interaction.
If making the fair 12/12 and 1/3, it's 3 cards but also less blown out by removal. You only need to attack with the 12/12, saving the 1/3 for "copy to counter removal". You can also make the 12/12 with Dress Down instead (if not playing the HasteNought line), only spending 2 cards.
If you didn't have Curie, that creature would be attacking instead of frozen un-sideways. So even when Curie can't draw cards, it passively has "gain 3 life per turn". It fogged an attacker by keeping it on defense. We've seen from Uro that such lifegain helps stabilize against aggressive decks, so that on-board Curie is not useless. Now add removal into the mix. Does opponent leave 2 blockers? Otherwise you can "2-for-1" them with remove blocker+attack with Curie. If they leave 2 blockers, you gain even more life.
Curie also passively threatens to turn into a haste 12/12 draw 12 at any time, so opponent has to save removal and mana at all times.
So opponent loses attackers & loses mana -> overall tempo lost.
That untapped passive Curie is slowing them down, even when it isn't doing the ideal thing. Maybe that's still not good enough to be better than other Dreadnought options, but it's not nothing. It's worth testing.
The main issues with Failwhale is that Delver has to play mirrormatches, and so it always dies to Bolt. Then when Failwhale user avoids a Bolt deck, they run into Endurance and there is no card they can rebuy with trigger to kill the Endurance. It's more that MurkGoyf doesn't care about those two unavoidable problems Failwhale can't handle, rather than beating a 3/3 in combat.
Faildancer has obvious problems with Bowmaster, but it has ophidian-like text + can't be blocked. While it's positioned quite poorly, you can at least trust it accomplish the hit a player requirement by itself, without other cards. The biggest issue is that Delver goes hellbent and then they draw this 2/1...and they're still 2 draws away from any value. Curie has the opposite problem where it can't be trusted to deal combat damage to a player, particularly when you've got about 15 slots invested in Dreadnought stuff. You're not protecting or clearing the way for Ophidian because Dress Down or Stifle or Thrull or Dreadnought are clogging the hand. This idea that Curie is a must-kill card is based on a deeply flawed notion that it can be trusted to draw cards by itself; oh look a blocker, check -> forced move Curie, blink first.
While we're at it we also have to say the name of the best green card in the game: Force of Vigor. I would also be remiss to not point out that if you deal 12 and have a draw 12 on the stack, you better hope they're dead before drawing 12 into a 40% Bowmaster format (13 to dome, swing for 14...hope you're not tapped out after paying 3 for the Curie ambush). While we're on Bowmaster, you've got some Curie issues if you ever Ponder into a Bowmaster passive as this creates an eternal fog (2/2) for Curie. It is difficult to find a magic card that plays into more of the most commonly used tools of legacy than Curie.
Just got some Doorkeeper Thrulls, they should be nice in this build. Would they be good to replace perhaps, stifles?
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