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Eldariel
11-03-2007, 11:06 PM
Soo, I decided to try to make something stupid. I really wanted to play Serendib Djinn (my last attempt at that, Faerie Stompy, kinda failed in that regard), so I decided to try something else and ended up in an UG aggro/control-deck of the Critical Mass-style. The surprising part was that the few games I played with the deck I won. Now, it might be just because I drew Shackles pretty often and Shackles are broken, but there might be something somewhere that's worthy of exploration.

As it stands, the deck runs insane amounts of mana to make sure that it can cast the midgame bombs and to enable Shackles. To compensate, it runs a bunch of manlands that make for nice beats. Obviously. Anyways, here's the result of some small brainstorming:

Lands
3 Treetop Village
4 Windswept Heath
3 Island
2 Forest
1 Faerie Conclave
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Breeding Pool
4 Tropical Island

Creatures
3 Ravenous Baloth
4 Serendib Djinn
4 Serendib Efreet
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
4 Birds of Paradise

Other Spells
4 Vedalken Shackles
4 Force of Will
4 Search for Tomorrow


Of course the deck loses to combo (unless it finds Force and combo goes all-in) and it's just incredibly janky, but for a reason or another, it seems to at least have something going on. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing came out of it, but I think UG Midrange might just be worth exploring; having more mana means you can do more things than Threshold and do them better (like, Shackles in Threshold is hardly as impressive as Shackles in a deck with 8 basic-fetchers and almost entirely 2-colour manabase, and Goyf, while great, doesn't quite hold the candle to Meloku or the like). It's really just Legacy Critical Mass playing few weird cards and no Top (since I apparently forgot to include it), but take a stab or two at it. As said, there could be a deck out there if someone bothers to dig it up (for the record, the few games I won were all on MWS, so nothing conclusive in that regard, but the fact that the wins came against Rg Goblins, BWg Deadguy, Death and Taxes, Rg Goyfsligh and Elves! makes me think the deck isn't entirely total garbage...but I did draw the right parts of the deck at right time, which helps (Baloths against Goyfsligh, cards against Goblins and...well, flyers against Elves, along with Shackles pretty often - and yes, Djinn took a few games home and it was never really a problem to cast. Of course, Efreets and Baloths were workhorses too. I never really drew Goyfs, except one which got Thoughtseized).

Nydaeli
11-03-2007, 11:19 PM
- Search for Tomorrow is really janky. Cut it or try Edge of Autumn (which is also janky).
- 15 blue spells is not enough for FoW.
- Some kind of draw/filtering would be good. Brainstorm? Ponder? Compulsive Research?

Eldariel
11-03-2007, 11:48 PM
Search is a 1-drop, which I really needed to curve the deck out, and it accelerates into 4-drops which the deck is full of while fitting a CiPT-land there if I don't have 2-drops (if I do, I can accelerate with them and play CiPT on turn 3 anyways).

True on FoW, maybe I should ram those green cards somewhere and go mono-blue. Or at least change the threat balance to more bluish way.

I like the idea of just playing big spells instead of fitting cantrips there and fiddling my thumbs. I don't really know when I'd cast the cantrips. Early turns are spent making manlands and accelerating the mana, midgame is spent making threats and lategame is spent activating manlands, Shackles, Meloku, etc. I dunno, maybe I should heave Tarmogoyf somewhere, it's a good card in a bad deck and it doesn't even feel like it's doing anything here. That would probably be a really bad idea though. I don't want to remove any Djinns since I made the deck to actually play Djinns, but I probably end up taking 'em out anyways. Meh.

Waikiki
11-04-2007, 01:05 PM
Dont vedalken shackles and the djinn have some annoying dissenergy?

Tao
11-04-2007, 01:18 PM
B-B- B- Brainstorm

Tacosnape
11-04-2007, 01:34 PM
B-B- B- Brainstorm

QFT. Brainstorm's one of the strongest blue cards in Legacy (I feel it's the strongest period, but it's definitely no worse than second), and the fact that you've already got four fetchlands makes including it a pretty solid option. Like Force, there's no Blue-based deck that can't benefit from running it (Aside from FS, which was built around Chalice-1.)

Tao
11-04-2007, 01:55 PM
4 Fetchlands plus 8 Mana search shufflers

xsockmonkeyx
11-04-2007, 10:56 PM
How about Coiling Oracle? Its a kinda janky U/G creature that adds to your mana, potentially.

Also, instead of 3 Meloku, maybe run the MUC suite of finishers, Meloku, Morphling, and Rainbow Efreet. That way you have ways to finish through spot removal, global removal, and play around pithing needle a little better.

Nihil Credo
11-05-2007, 12:00 PM
2 Treetop Village
2 Faerie Conclave
4 Windswept Heath
3 Flooded Strand
3 Island
2 Forest
2 Breeding Pool
4 Tropical Island

4 Force of Will

4 Birds of Paradise
4 Brainstorm

4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Serendib Efreet
3 Vedalken Shackles
2 Sword of Fire and Ice

3 Serendib Djinn
3 Garruk Wildspeaker

3 Meloku the Clouded Mirror

(It's 61 cards, but it's still way too early in development for that little edge to matter.)


- Ravenous Baloth is not good enough on its own, IMO. These days, I'd only play it if I absolutely needed the lifegain, or if I could recur him.
- Serendib Djinn is pretty mediocre in multiples. That's a 3-of to me.
- Equipment: Sword of Fire and Ice gives your BoPs and Elders something to do if you draw them lategame and can't Brainstorm them away. Umezawa's Jitte does not trigger off BoPs, but the lifegain and bigger removal may be more important. I'd test the posted configuration first and figure out how many copies of each one you want.
- Garruk looks very good in this deck: while you curve out, it's a Ur-Golem's Eye that untaps manlands, and two turns later can Overrun for the win (let's not mention how insane Meloku + Garruk Ultimate is...). If, instead, you topdeck it later on, it's a continuous stream of 3/3s. Also, he pumps Goyf when it dies.

Aggro_zombies
11-05-2007, 12:31 PM
Force of Will seems out of place here. Maybe I'm just used to seeing Force of Will with his friend Daze and possibly their buddy Counterspell, but running a mere four disruption pieces doesn't seem like it will be tremendously useful in terms of consistency. You're playing what seems like a straightforward beatdown deck, with four one-shot disruption pieces...Goblins runs 8 disruption pieces, with four of those being reusable. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Force of Will seems like a poor choice in this deck, strategically.

kirdape3
11-05-2007, 02:42 PM
I'm Tradewind Rider, and I approve this message.

Media314r8
11-05-2007, 03:11 PM
Shackles + faerie conclave + treetop village = ????
You're certainly not stealing goyfs unless you are on turn nine or so. With the amount of non-islands here, why not just run threads of disloyalty. Gets the same job done about 6 turns earlier.

BTW, jank is an appropriote name. Seems like a luck-sack deck even more so than FS and a near-ideal hand is needed to compete against any archtype in legacy.

One and one-half thumbs down.

Cavius The Great
11-06-2007, 11:29 AM
I would up the basic land count to six instead of five. Five seems a little low, I would probably replace a treetop village for an additional basic to ensure that search for tomorrow is less of a dead draw.

I too have been trying to break Serendib Djinn as well. Here is a link to my U/W Djinn Stompy creation. Maybe this thread can generate new ideas, who knows. Here's the link.

http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7186

94teen
11-06-2007, 02:11 PM
Could something like this work in conjuction with the deck that was posted awhile ago using stuff like Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Fathom Seer, and Exalted Angel? I know this is 2 color, but it seems like a morph package would work out well for this kind of midrange deck, especially with the kind of beatsticks you're playing.

If you played 4 'Goyf, 4 Vesuvan, 4 Threads of Disloyalty, you'd have (potentially) 12 'Goyfs, and could easily control the midgame against threshold if you played enough counters.

I realize that kinda takes this in a different direction, because Vesuvan Shapeshfiter doesn't do a whole lot with Serendib Djinn other than give you another copy without having to pay the cost twice.

Cavius The Great
04-15-2008, 12:06 PM
@Eldariel - Have you been testing this list any further? I'm really interested to see what you've developed so far, if anything at all.

Eldariel
04-15-2008, 07:11 PM
I kinda forgot this thing existed. I haven't had time to work that much on Magic lately and I don't really like this deck too much anyways, so I haven't really been into this thing for a while.