[Deck] Severance Belcher

[The Rack]

Hello all, welcome to another shenanigan thread created by The Rack!!! The topic today is Severance Belcher, an outdated combo deck that I want to make competitive again!! Let's start out with the list.

// Lands
12 [ST] Island (2)
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [ON] Flooded Strand

// Spells
4 [TE] Mana Severance
4 [MR] Goblin Charbelcher
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [VI] Impulse
4 [5E] Counterspell
4 [NE] Daze
4 [FD] Serum Visions
4 [RAV] Muddle the Mixture
4 [AL] Lat-Nam's Legacy (1)

Lands:
The perfect land count is 5, reaqson being, with a belcher on the table a Mana Severance wins. 2 for severance and 3 to activate. The fetches are there to get me more draw spells and such.

Spells:
Mana Severance- Basis of Combo

Goblin Charbelcher- basis of combo

Force of will- needed protection

Brainstorm- Library Manipulation and very synergistic with fetches

Impulse- Digs 4 deep and grabs anything

Counterspell- basically a time walk turn 2,3 or 4.

Daze- Really nice when I'm tapped out for a belcher they counbter and I daze. Not really sure about this spot though. Maybe Stifle?

Serum Visions- Good draw and library manipulation is always good

Muddle the Mixture- can fetch severance but is really slow. Any better ideas?

Lat-Nam's Legacy- I'm sure none opf you have heard of this so
"Shuffle a card from your hand into your library cantrip at next upkeep for 2 cards" It's always good early game and late game. I really like the card too.


No matchups becausde there isn;'t a solid decklist up. Any ideas are welcome. Please do not try to redirect me to another deck, I don't quit on decks. Thanks.

[aisman132000]

i feel like your going to need a lot more protection than you have currently. You need more answers to turn 1 lackey than just force of will. Swords to plowshares possibly? The fastest you can go off is like turn 4 maybe and that is undissrupted with a great draw. Goblins and solidarity can both race you and threshold has enough disruption to cause you problems. Maybe instead of playing so many cantrips you can go a more controlish route with wrath et all. u/w Control deck with severance-belcher kill?

[The Rack]

A U/W version has been thought of but I'm looking for a fast kill. I like control but only accompanied with speed. (contradictory) I usually let goblins play their games counter a warchief or piledriver and that buys me enough time to turn 5 win. It happens quite often actually. I would like o keep it monoblue for the manabase's sake. It would give Goblins another reason to hurt me. Thanks for the input.

[MasterBlaster]

Have you thought about Chrome Mox/City of Traitors/Ancient Tomb to speed up the deck?

Mystical Tutor might be a good replacement for Muddle the Mixture.

Also you might want a 1-of bounce spell that you can fetch for if someone plays a Meddling Mage or Pithing Needle.

[The Cisco Kid]

I really like the idea of Severance Belcher. I've actually tried to power out some lists for myself on occasion. While I agree with aisman that your kill turn is slightly later than Goblins which would necessitate more removal, another, maybe larger concern is hate in the form of Pithing Needle. I know that this is a control deck, but 60% of the time your opponent opens with a Needle, you won't have the Force of Will to stop it. And then you have no answer.

I'm really trying to pull out some positive suggestions to add to this discussion and possibly the development of what I think is a solid idea, but I have so many that this post is destined to be both long and anarchic. That said, here's what I've got:

1.) Specific cards
Here I want to name off a few cards which I think should at least be considered for the deck for their particular interactions it.

Lion's Eye Diamond: This card by itself allows you to reduce the turn you go off by one. Though this leaves you completely vulnerable, the explosiveness in playing and activating Belcher in the same turn is awesome. However, I'm not sold that the interaction is worth the drawback.

Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, and Lotus Petal: I think that any of these would be incredibly helpful by powering out your combo earlier and enabling you to cast counters earlier as well.

Stifle: I think if you're going for a mono-color build, this card would be key. Whether it kills a fetchland or a Lackey trigger or a Storm trigger, I think that this card is going to help much more often than hurt.

2.) Splash
Many of the problems I addressed in the openning are difficult to deal with in blue, so you might want to splash some variety of colors in order to find the tools to handle them.

U/b: This gives you access to one card I find very underused in Legacy, Lim-Dul's Vault. It could easily find a niche here, acting as a quasi-tutor without the restrictioning the type of card you search for. One of its fundamental drawbacks, though, is that it is card disadvantage. But regardless, other incentives are Duress, Night's Whisper, Dark Ritual, and quite a few sideboard options.

U/r: This gives you a much better match-up against creature decks with the addition of removal like Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Fire/Ice, and Magma Jet. The problem here is that it just seems to dilute your combo a good deal.

U/w: Here you'll probably get some creatures in your deck, but it gives you options like Orim's Chant and Meddling Mage to hose combo and Swords to Plowshares to eat Lackeys.

U/Brown: I think this is the option I like the most, where you play a prison deck with a Severance kill. I'm not sure that it's the best, and in fact it may end up being bad (especially against Goblins), but I think Chalice of the Void at one might help a lot of different matchups. Add Smokestack and Tangle Wire and Trinisphere, and I think you've got a pretty decent looking deck.

3.) Decklist:
If I had to play a Severance Belcher deck tomorrow with little/no testing, I'd play something that looks like this

// Lands
5 Island
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
3 Wasteland
1 Academy Ruins
// Spells
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Mana Severance
3 Transmute Artifact
// Artifacts
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Crucible of Worlds
3 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Mox Diamond
4 Powder Keg
4 Smokestack
4 Tangle Wire

I'm not sure that I really helped anything, but maybe something I said will spark some more innovation. Here's to hoping Null Rods stay far far away!

[Zilla]

No matter what you do with the deck, it must have answers to a resolved Pithing Needle. The first list in this thread does not, and that's a very real problem. Echoing Truth, Powder Keg, Engineered Explosives, and Chain of Vapor are all viable answers, but you're going to ahve to make room for one or more of them.

I also agree that Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, and/or Chrome Mox as accelleration are essential components to the deck, in that they speed up your win at essentially no detriment whatsoever.

[Drkdstryer]

The problem with Lat-Nam's Legacy is that it's a slow-trip. Drawing 2 doesn't mean much when you shuffle a card out of your hand anyway - any cantrip that costs 1 seems like it could be better than Lat-Nam's. Obviously if you have cards you want out of your hand and in the library this is an excellent card (think Draco-Explosion) but this deck would only be running it for how different it is.

Sleight seems better, maybe Predict to keep instant speed?

[The Rack]

I'm currently using MasterBlaster's idea with 3 MT and 1 Echoing Truhg. That's working pretty good. Lat-Nam's legacy is good at throwing away other combo pieces when you have multiples. I'll try Chrome Mox instead.

Zilla: could you rename it Blueberry Belcher please? It's monoblue so the name is descriptive and it adds some color to the name instead of Severance Belcher. Thanks.