Pans-Advocate
05-26-2013, 04:46 AM
Hi guys, I've been working on this idea for a couple weeks now and I think I've got it tuned enough to start talking about it. The idea started kicking around on Salvation when Hidden Strings was printed in DGM and people over there have been doing interesting things with Gifts Ungiven, but it wasn't long before this variant turned up and demonstrated itself to be (in my opinion) the superior way to abuse mana auras and untap effects.
Jacob Van Lunen wrote an article on a Pauper version of this deck back in 2009, as Google has demonstrated to me, and I think the changes from that list available in the Modern format make this potentially viable.
Without further ado, the list I've arrived at:
3 Breeding Pool
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Steam Vents
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Fertile Ground
2 Verdant Haven
4 Dream's Grip
4 Psychic Puppetry
4 Ideas Unbound
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Reach Through Mists
2 Past in Flames
1 Grapeshot
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Remand
1 Echoing Truth
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
1 Echoing Truth
3 Pyroclasm
2 Dispel
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Squelch
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Burst of Speed
Basically the game plan is simple: play land auras on the first 2-3 turns, find a Psychic Puppetry, and then go off with a deck that has suddenly become irretrievably broken. With a land that produces UUU (usually U/G + U + X, with a Sprawl set to blue and a Ground) and a Puppetry in hand, your Dream's Grips are blue Dark Rituals, your Ideas Unbound are free Ancestral Recalls, your Peer Through Depths are free Impulses, and your Reach Through Mists are Manamorphoses that net a mana. Each land aura you add gives you an extra mana per arcane spell or Twiddle effect you cast. Usually, after a chain of free Ideas and Peers, you find a Dream's Grip and a Past in Flames, cast them both so as to PIF with U up, use it to untap your land, recast all your digging and draw spells, and at this point finding Grapeshot for 20 or Shot -> Remand -> Shot for lethal (in case you found more mana makers than card draw and your storm count is lower than 20 with no way to dig into more action) should be purely academic.
The deck is totally capable of winning on turn 3 and in testing I have seen this occur about 1 in perhaps 5 or 6 games. It is not often that the deck finds itself unable to threaten a win until turn 5 or later, and turn 4 is a standard goldfish assuming no disruption (and often despite some). It is even conceivably possible to win on turn 2, although this is invariably pretty dicey and probably not safe to try unless under extreme pressure, and even then only with the very strong hands that would otherwise win turn 3.
This list is not quite as resilient to hate as the old UR Storm lists from before Seething Song was banned, primarily because in the end it still relies on permanents. Abrupt Decay is a relevant card against this deck, for example. And there are some cards that cause serious problems, specifically Spellskite, Cryptic Command, Ghost Quarter, and Karn Liberated, since basically anything that can interact with your land in an unrestricted fashion is going to be devastating if deployed the turn before you combo off (Spellskite is bad because it can redirect all your untaps, and you can't win with an active Spellskite on the field). Blood Moon is also scary because our best starts involve Utopia Sprawl, which falls off the Breeding Pool that we put it on if it becomes a Mountain.
However, any deck that is just trying to play a fair game of Magic (along with some hybrid combo decks that aren't necessarily) is likely to lose a race to our goldfish, and control decks are put in a rough position by the fact that there is so much redundancy in the deck once the combo is assembled (and the crucial combo card sits in our hand without ever going on the stack) that countering a single Ideas or Peer is often not enough - we'll just go off again next turn, or Twiddle our land and start again. Any deck that doesn't clock us will probably lose to running out of reactive answers unless they completely and proactively eradicate our hand, and even hand disruption is sometimes not enough.
Most of the cards are pretty self-explanatory... 15 land (high fetch count due to always always wanting Breeding Pool on turn 1), 10 auras, 8 cantrips, 16 Arcane spells, 4 "rituals," a finishing package of 2 Past in Flames and a Grapeshot, and 4 utility slots. The utility slots are interesting ... between Remand, Merchant Scroll, and Muddle the Mixture you have 2 counterspells, 2 tutors, and a "2nd Grapeshot," all in 3 slots, which makes for a very elegant use of space. The singleton Echoing Truth is primarily for Spellskite in g1 and can also just stall for time or bounce a Deathrite or Thalia.
The sideboard choices are probably self-explanatory but just to be clear:
-Pithing Needle vs Ghost Quarter, Spellskite, Deathrite Shaman
-Squelch vs Ghost Quarter (this might be loose but it's been useful in the past)
-Echoing Truth vs Leylines, Thalia, Gaddock Teeg, Cage, etc (only 1 because we already have one main plus 2 tutors)
-Leyline of Sanctity vs decks that race you with burn or have extreme targeted discard
-Dispel vs Cryptic Command and other countermagic
-Empty/Burst of Speed against Extraction effects and Leyline of Sanctity (this has not yet been useful but it's a hedge)
I think you'll find in testing that this deck can be surprisingly powerful. Any thoughts are welcome.
Jacob Van Lunen wrote an article on a Pauper version of this deck back in 2009, as Google has demonstrated to me, and I think the changes from that list available in the Modern format make this potentially viable.
Without further ado, the list I've arrived at:
3 Breeding Pool
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Steam Vents
4 Utopia Sprawl
4 Fertile Ground
2 Verdant Haven
4 Dream's Grip
4 Psychic Puppetry
4 Ideas Unbound
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Reach Through Mists
2 Past in Flames
1 Grapeshot
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Remand
1 Echoing Truth
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
1 Echoing Truth
3 Pyroclasm
2 Dispel
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Squelch
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Burst of Speed
Basically the game plan is simple: play land auras on the first 2-3 turns, find a Psychic Puppetry, and then go off with a deck that has suddenly become irretrievably broken. With a land that produces UUU (usually U/G + U + X, with a Sprawl set to blue and a Ground) and a Puppetry in hand, your Dream's Grips are blue Dark Rituals, your Ideas Unbound are free Ancestral Recalls, your Peer Through Depths are free Impulses, and your Reach Through Mists are Manamorphoses that net a mana. Each land aura you add gives you an extra mana per arcane spell or Twiddle effect you cast. Usually, after a chain of free Ideas and Peers, you find a Dream's Grip and a Past in Flames, cast them both so as to PIF with U up, use it to untap your land, recast all your digging and draw spells, and at this point finding Grapeshot for 20 or Shot -> Remand -> Shot for lethal (in case you found more mana makers than card draw and your storm count is lower than 20 with no way to dig into more action) should be purely academic.
The deck is totally capable of winning on turn 3 and in testing I have seen this occur about 1 in perhaps 5 or 6 games. It is not often that the deck finds itself unable to threaten a win until turn 5 or later, and turn 4 is a standard goldfish assuming no disruption (and often despite some). It is even conceivably possible to win on turn 2, although this is invariably pretty dicey and probably not safe to try unless under extreme pressure, and even then only with the very strong hands that would otherwise win turn 3.
This list is not quite as resilient to hate as the old UR Storm lists from before Seething Song was banned, primarily because in the end it still relies on permanents. Abrupt Decay is a relevant card against this deck, for example. And there are some cards that cause serious problems, specifically Spellskite, Cryptic Command, Ghost Quarter, and Karn Liberated, since basically anything that can interact with your land in an unrestricted fashion is going to be devastating if deployed the turn before you combo off (Spellskite is bad because it can redirect all your untaps, and you can't win with an active Spellskite on the field). Blood Moon is also scary because our best starts involve Utopia Sprawl, which falls off the Breeding Pool that we put it on if it becomes a Mountain.
However, any deck that is just trying to play a fair game of Magic (along with some hybrid combo decks that aren't necessarily) is likely to lose a race to our goldfish, and control decks are put in a rough position by the fact that there is so much redundancy in the deck once the combo is assembled (and the crucial combo card sits in our hand without ever going on the stack) that countering a single Ideas or Peer is often not enough - we'll just go off again next turn, or Twiddle our land and start again. Any deck that doesn't clock us will probably lose to running out of reactive answers unless they completely and proactively eradicate our hand, and even hand disruption is sometimes not enough.
Most of the cards are pretty self-explanatory... 15 land (high fetch count due to always always wanting Breeding Pool on turn 1), 10 auras, 8 cantrips, 16 Arcane spells, 4 "rituals," a finishing package of 2 Past in Flames and a Grapeshot, and 4 utility slots. The utility slots are interesting ... between Remand, Merchant Scroll, and Muddle the Mixture you have 2 counterspells, 2 tutors, and a "2nd Grapeshot," all in 3 slots, which makes for a very elegant use of space. The singleton Echoing Truth is primarily for Spellskite in g1 and can also just stall for time or bounce a Deathrite or Thalia.
The sideboard choices are probably self-explanatory but just to be clear:
-Pithing Needle vs Ghost Quarter, Spellskite, Deathrite Shaman
-Squelch vs Ghost Quarter (this might be loose but it's been useful in the past)
-Echoing Truth vs Leylines, Thalia, Gaddock Teeg, Cage, etc (only 1 because we already have one main plus 2 tutors)
-Leyline of Sanctity vs decks that race you with burn or have extreme targeted discard
-Dispel vs Cryptic Command and other countermagic
-Empty/Burst of Speed against Extraction effects and Leyline of Sanctity (this has not yet been useful but it's a hedge)
I think you'll find in testing that this deck can be surprisingly powerful. Any thoughts are welcome.