Vault O' Hate (BWu agro-control [yes, splash blue])

[raharu]

This deck, contrary to it's name, is not a metagame deck, and is not a deck with some weak, pathetic win-con and 32-ish cards of hate for the top decks. It is a cohesive deck that should have a good MU against any deck (even rouge decks and random jank). Discard rips the hand, effective beats hold the board, and the perfect card for any situation is only a few life away... Here it is, Vault O' Hate:

Filter: 4
Lim-Dul’s Vault x4

Discard: 16
Cabal Therapy x4
Extirpate x4
Thoughtseize x4
Gerard’s Verdict x4

Creatures: 16
Mother of Runes x4
Dark Confidant x3
Spectral Lynx x3
Serra Avenger x3
Phyrexian Negator x3

Removal: 6
Swords to Plowshares x4
Vindicate x2


Lands: 18
Scrubland x4
Underground Sea x2
Tundra x2
Plains x2
Swamp x1
Island x1
Flooded Strand x3
Polluted Delta x3

Sideboard: 15
Leyline of the Void x4
Vindicate x2
Uwzema's Jitte/ Sword of Fire and Ice x2
Rule of Law x3 (this should probably be something else)
Meddling Mage x4

This was intended to be an entry for CaNG, but I realized that I don't have the resources to bet the deck built and tested by the deadline, so I really could care less.

The point of this deck is to have a non-narrow answer to everything (not the tier one decks, but every plan possible) and be able to find it without any reasonable amount of a problem. Vault allows you to fin the apropriate card for the situation and with that said, the card is there. MD Vindicates for anything permanant based (also extra removal on top of StP), 4 MD Extirpate for removing problematic cards and it nixes recursion. The discard package is the way it is for a fairly good reason: Thoughtseize pops anything non-land, Cabal Therapy gets whatever Thoughtseize misses, and Gerard's Verdict was chosen over Hymn because it is less mana intensive and encourages the opponent to keep lands (this happens often), which generally hurts more than 2 random cards, although I know I'm going to get flack for that statement, I have seen it to be true. The 4 MD Extirpates could be called a shaky/ bad/ metagame choice, but unless the person you're facing is running 1-of.dec, the card is golden,and it has its purposes, even in the agro MU, although they should be sided out. This deck can do mean things to combo/ control and should have a great MU against thresh (4x Extirpate + 4x Vault should be brutal). The creature set is pretty resilient by itself because of either inherent Pro of Mother of Runes, but the discard just makes them even better. The blue splash is only for Meddling Mage and Vault, but both are really nice aditions to the deck and help with MUs and cards I don't want to see.

The manabase: it is like it is because I like to have a uber-stable manabase when playing agro-control because I'm trying to do so many things at once. Hence, I'm wastelock proof and the only doubble color that I have to hit (eventually) is white.

The sideboard: Just a few non-narrow solutions to just about everything. Maybe some Stifle is in order.

That would be about all one could say about this deck. Comments, Sugestions?

[vigilante]

I like the idea of an aggro-disruption style deck that can fetch appropriate disruption pieces at will. The concept reminds me of an old BRW hate deck (called "Witches" I believe) that used (unrestricted!) Demonic Consultations in place of the Lim-Dul's Vaults you're using. Obviously, I wouldn't recommend trying Consultations these days, but the parallels in the strategies are obvious.

Cursed Scroll was an integral part of Witches, and as Lim-Dul's Vault generates card disadvantage when you use it (in exchange for improving the quality of your draws) it may be worth trying in your build too.


For reference (note that it's not exactly Witches, but I couldn't find an exact decklist anywhere; this seems to be the closest).

Bad Mixture - Stefan "Steve" Ebner (May 99)

4 Swamp
4 Badland
4 Scrubland
2 Bad River
1 City of Brass
1 Gemstone Mine
3 Wasteland
3 Mishra´s Factory

2 Mox Diamond
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Cuombajj Witches (someone, anyone, I'm begging -- please use these in a modern Legacy deck!)
4 Black Knight
3 Skittering Skirge
4 Sedge Troll
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Disenchant
3 Cursed Scroll
3 Demonic Consultation

Sideboard:
4 Duress
4 Engineered Plague
3 Planar Void
2 Gloom
2 Perish

[raharu]

The weird creature choices and lack of a wide array of versatile answers makes me leery of that deck, although it looks a little like one of this decks Predecessors, trying to work Dark Confidant + Sensei's Divining Top into a reliable tutor, relying on redundancy to get what I needed (which is a theme that continues here, albeit with Vault to make it more certant).

[vigilante]

Note that Ebner's deck is from circa 1999. I wasn't suggesting it as the basis for a modern build per se, more as an illustration that the concept has worked before.