Notion Thief.dec

[Mr. Safety]

I am in the process of developing Notion Thief into a deck in Modern. Will it be good? Maybe. I think Notion Thief is a bit underpowered for Legacy applications but for Modern it might really shine. My thoughts on this are focused around four specific cards:

Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
Jace Beleren
Dream Fracture
Vision Skeins


My current ideas for the deck are quite rough, basically a BUG Control deck that uses Notion Thief as it's draw support alongside a Mytical Teachings engine. Why BUG? Mostly Deathrite Shaman, Abrupt Decay, and Tarmogoyf. It seems to be a decent setup as a control deck that utilizes Goyf beats and Shaman advantage.

Intial list in development:

4x Deathrite Shaman
4x Notion Thief
3x Tarmogoyf
1x Eternal Witness

2-3x Jace Beleren
3-4x Mystical Teachings
4x Mana Leak
3x Abrupt Decay
3-4x Thoughtseize
1-3x Dream Fracture
1-4x Maelstrom Pulse
0-2x Crime//Punishment
2-4x Liliana of the Veil

Added to those options, a Teachings toolbox with something like this:

Darkblast
Vendilion Clique
Scryb Sprite
Spell Snare
Vision Skeins
Doom Blade

Traditional mana base with 24 lands would apply, something like this:

4x Verdant Catacombs
3x Misty Rainforest
2x Breeding Pool
2x Watery Grave
2x Overgrown Tomb
1x Creeping Tar Pit
1x Alchemist's Refuge
2x Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
2x Island
2x Swamp
2x Forest
1x Ghost Quarter


If anyone else is thinking about Notion Thief and using it in Modern, I would love to hear your thoughts on it. When I get a stabilized list established, I will edit this primer in order to reflect experience and matchups.

Why play Notion Thief?

1) It allows a BUG Control type of setup to play 'draw, go.' Control, at least true control, is almost non-existent in Modern. I think the biggest things holding it back are good permission spells and a decent draw engine. Notion Thief allows Dream Fracture to be *amazing* and makes a good card like Jace Beleren even better.

2) It has the ability to play strong at all stages of the game: early disruption, mid-game card advantage, and a draw engine that will surpass most (if not all) other options that other decks in the format are playing.

3) It has potential against every deck in the format that I am currently aware of (Melira/Kiki Pod, Splinter Twin, R/u Storm, Affinity, G/R Tron, G/R aggro, and American Mid-range/Delver)

Comments and feedback are welcome! I hope to develop this deck over the next few months to see what Notion Thief can do. I began Modern playing BUG Gifts, but I think Mystical Teachings is a natural tag-along with Notion Thief. I may be wrong, but if I wanted to play Gifts I'd just go for the classic Unburial Rites/Iona/Griselbrand combo. I want to play control, and I want a card advantage engine that can't be beat once the game gets past turn 4. My hope is that Notion Thief provides that engine.

[Mr. Safety]

{Reserved}

[Mr. Safety]

Wistful Thinking is a big-time option for this deck, too.

[kombatkiwi]

Seems kind of bad. A lot of your post is empty rhetoric without a lot of concrete reasoning. Once you are playing mystical teachings you already have "a draw engine that will surpass most (if not all) other options that other decks in the format are playing" (as long as you can figure out a way to play around Deathrite) so why even bother going into super-danger-of-cool-things-mode and attempt to take it even further by playing a 4-mana creature that dies to Lightning Bolt? As your post implies, most decks in this format do not draw many cards. Unfortunately this means you will basically never be able to trap somebody with a Notion Thief (unlike legacy where people play JTMS and Brainstorm and Ancestral Vision and Standstill) and will have to combo it with your own cards in order for it to actually do things. In the case of Mikokoro it's fine because it's just a land but once you are doing weird things like playing Dream Fracture and maindeck Belerens just to support your incredibly fragile 4-mana creature I find it difficult to believe that the strategy is viable.

EDIT:

4 Colour Notion

4 Notion Thief
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Sulfur Elemental
1 Vendilion Clique
17 Creatures

19 Other Spells
4 Burning Inquiry
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Thoughtseize
3 Inquisition
3 Mana Leak/Dream Fracture/Remand/Whatevs
4 Lightning Bolt

24 Lands
1 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Mountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Watery Grave
1 Breeding Pool
1 Stomping Ground
1 Blood Crypt
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
1 Mikokoro
1 Urborg
2 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Raging Ravine

This is how I would start for building a deck with Notion Thief
-More flash threats means you can keep rolling the draw-go plan (Clique trigger is really cute with notion thief also)
-Sulfur Elemental reasonable card in its own right (see above point), also good against Lingering Souls which your 4 mana 3/1 really doesn't like
-4 Burning Inquiry because if you're going to play cards that are only good with Notion Thief anyway you might as well do yourself the favour of playing 1-mana Ancestral Recall + Super Hymn
-More cheap spells gives you a much better early game and lets you convert the Notion Thief draws into plays much more easily, giving you a better way of leveraging the card advantage over your opponent

But again, Notion Thief is still 4 mana for 1 toughness. If I have to put in effort to make my Notion Thief work because I will never be able to simply cast it in response to their draw spell (as is the case for modern where such spells are not played) then I do not consider it worth the risk of building around such an expensive, fragile body in a format where everybody plays lightning bolt.

EDIT again

I tested a couple of games with this list and Thief + Inquiry is as obscene as it sounds but you never actually want to cast Inquiry until you have the Thief in play. If you replace them with something like Careful Consideration (maybe trim it down to 3 so your curve doesn't go full retard) then I actually quite like what this deck is doing.
Things that I have naturally theifed so far:
Serum Visions
Wall of Omens

[Viridia]

Why not play some amount of Kira Great Glass Spinner if you're so afraid of lightning bolt? It fits the curve quite well, while easily protecting your Notion Thiefs and gaining CA.

[Mr. Safety]

I was thinking 4 colors, but I wanted to start with 3. I have a feeling that there will be non-basic hate printed soon that will punish Modern's greedy mana base.

I agree that Burning Inquiry seems really great, I missed that one (having already dismissed Reforge the Soul, not sure why, but it didn't make my cut list yet.)

I will test the deck and post results, as I mentioned in the opener. At this point, it's just a rough idea that will need tweaking.

[ahg113]

Based off the initial decklist, and that your deck wants to be spending mana early and often, I think Lotus Cobra is a much better fit than Goyf in your deck. Will help smoothing, and with fetches is great ramp.

I also tend to like the four color notion a bit better. Would maybe skim the 4's of Snappy, Sulfur and DRS to go with 3 L. Cobras. Of those counterspell options, I'd go with Dream Fracture (unconditional permanent answer to threat, combos with Thief, with L.Cobra, extra mana shouldn't be a hinderance.)

[kombatkiwi]

Based off the initial decklist, and that your deck wants to be spending mana early and often, I think Lotus Cobra is a much better fit than Goyf in your deck. Will help smoothing, and with fetches is great ramp.

I also tend to like the four color notion a bit better. Would maybe skim the 4's of Snappy, Sulfur and DRS to go with 3 L. Cobras. Of those counterspell options, I'd go with Dream Fracture (unconditional permanent answer to threat, combos with Thief, with L.Cobra, extra mana shouldn't be a hinderance.)

I like this idea, Lotus cobra seems like a good fit

[YamiJoey]

Are you really not playing Windfall here? You already operate on four mana, so why not just equip your guy with "When it does damage, you lose your hand... Again.". If you fall behind, which is very likely with these slower, less proactive tutor-based decks, you can just draw a full hand again and mess with their plan.

[kombatkiwi]

Are you really not playing Windfall here? You already operate on four mana, so why not just equip your guy with "When it does damage, you lose your hand... Again.". If you fall behind, which is very likely with these slower, less proactive tutor-based decks, you can just draw a full hand again and mess with their plan.

The risk of having to stick it to a creature and then hit them them is probably not worth the slight benefit it offers over something like Careful Consideration but it's close enough to at least test 1 or 2 copies.

[YamiJoey]

The risk of having to stick it to a creature and then hit them them is probably not worth the slight benefit it offers over something like Careful Consideration but it's close enough to at least test 1 or 2 copies.

It really doesn't matter. You cast Notion Thief, and then untap into "I draw 8 cards you discard your hand" or whatever. The swing of casting it once is enough, and against control decks and stuff you can just ruin their plans by forcing them to loot their whole hand whilst you draw two/three extra cards.

[LEH]

I do like Notion Thief but not sure how viable he is in Modern. Modern is vastly more hostile to creatures than Legacy (due to Modern being a creature-centric format) and, unfortunately, he dies to nearly everything - annoyingly he's 1 mana too expensive for Legacy for Modern imo as he would be bonkers good at 3cmc. Having said that, I will be trying to come up with a fun deck to play that features Notion Thief, having just procured my playset for next to nothing. I just don't know if a deck should be built around him due to him being very fragile. Nevertheless, Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, Vision Skeins and Jace Beleren do seem like fun includes in any deck and has great synergy with Thief, so I'm gonna try it out.

[YamiJoey]

I'd agree with that sentiment very much, and be looking at some kind of Esper deck using Jace, and using Notion Thief as a way to simply trump certain other cards in the format, and sometimes you gain extra value from Jace.

It very much just seems like a sideboard card for against UWx control.

[Mr. Safety]

Based off the initial decklist, and that your deck wants to be spending mana early and often, I think Lotus Cobra is a much better fit than Goyf in your deck. Will help smoothing, and with fetches is great ramp.

I also tend to like the four color notion a bit better. Would maybe skim the 4's of Snappy, Sulfur and DRS to go with 3 L. Cobras. Of those counterspell options, I'd go with Dream Fracture (unconditional permanent answer to threat, combos with Thief, with L.Cobra, extra mana shouldn't be a hinderance.)

Thank you for the Lotus Cobra idea and reminding (all of) us that whatever happens, Dream Fracture is STILL a hard counter. Yes they draw a card, not it will not always matter even without Thief on board.

Cobra seems like the nuts, honestly. Will have to work that in place of the Goyfs.

[CarlsonJJ]

I was playing a Modern Notion Thief deck this past weekend. I have Jace's Archivist in the deck, along with Blood Scrivener. I don't think the Archivist is worth it, but if I was to include red as you have, I would instead run Reforge the Soul. The Scrivener let's you draw additional cards with the empty hand, so a Reforge the Sould with Scrivener and Notion Thief is a ton of card advantage. Thanks for the pointing out Burning Inquiry. That's an awesome combination! Dream Fracture also seems good. I do have Wistful Thinking in the deck, and it is superb. Along those same lines, every Compulsive Research I cast on my opponent was amazing. There's something about both those cards with Notion Thief that really took a lot of wind out my opponent's sails.

I was running a singleton Psychosis Crawler in the deck, but never once wanted to play it. There was always something else I wanted to be doing. Jace's Erasure, however, frequently won me the game alongside Consuming Aberration.

I was looking at some other possible includes, and found Shah of Naar Isle. A 6/6 Trample for 4 can be devastating, especially if your Notion Thief turns the echo into "0: Draw up to three cards." :smile:

Molten Psyche I think has potential, as if you can get metalcraft up, it is an alternate win condition if the Notion Thief isn't around.

I'd really like to get Shared Fate in the deck. As, it can make it so I can get cards, and my opponent can't. Teferi's Puzzle Box was filling this role very well, as it quickly emptied my opponent's hand with Notion Thief in play. The Puzzle Box also comboed well with Jace's Erasure.

[evanmartyr]

Spending 6 mana to get a 3/1 and draw 4 cards seems pretty bad. Could just be me. Like, the drawing is fine, and the 3/1 is fine, but the whole point of Notion Thief, and where it really shines, is to turn your opponents' attempts to spend resources to get cards into complete blowouts. An opponent that's willing to tap out for a Sphinx's Revelation for 6 is a prime Notion Thief target. A JTMS activation or Brainstorm is a prime target. You giving them cards for free and then taking away those cards, cackling while you do it, seems pretty shaky.

I just don't think the cards that Notion Thief shines against are played in Modern, and requiring 4+ mana and additional cards to pull off any sort of significant gain on a consistent basis is not a good game plan. Burning Inquiry seems to be the only good option of a combo card, since Thief-ing it is absolutely devastating and it's *cheap*. Dream Salvage could give you some consistency, especially in a disruption/removal heavy deck. All the cards you're drawing could support Raven's Crime for some long-term disruption.

[Mr. Safety]

What I'm attempting to do is make a deck with Notion Thief as it's centerpiece, which means I don't want to 'just' have a narrow answer to opponents playing draw spells. I want to make sure I get value out of Thief regardless of whether my opponent gets additional draws or not.

I just want to live the dream by playing Notion Thief at my opponent's end step, untap, and then counter their next spell with Dream Fracture while having an additional land untapped for removal or discard.

[kwis]

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=3589&type=card

It would be a pretty sweet lock if it existed in this format. I always enjoyed the cards interaction with Chains of Mephistopheles and Notion Theif is the next best thing. Unfortuantely I don't think there's a functional replacement for Anvil. However that's the kind of card you want to be looking for to break him.

[AlterEgo]

How about...

http://magiccards.info/scans/en/9e/312.jpg

?

Another four mana, but unless they naturally draw into an instant speed removal for either thief or box, these are a hard lock.

[Mr. Safety]

I like the idea of Puzzle Box, and I realize they will only have access to one card for the rest of the game. I don't like the chaotic nature of discarding my 7 cards and getting 7 new ones each turn. Once card advantage has been achieved I kind of like to 'plan out my turns.' Puzzle Box doesn't let me do that.

For a one-shot wonder, I think the best option is Reforge the Soul. I tried BUG colors in legacy, and it was decent, but I think Grixis colors are better in Modern. I wish there was a way to set up Reforge the Soul though...the only cards we really have available are Serum Visions, Magma Jet, and Condescend for sifting the top cards to ensure a miracled Reforge. Still, in all honesty, EOT Thief into a turn 4-5 hardcast Reforge seems good. It curves out nicely.