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Thread: [WBG] RecWitness.

  1. #1

    [WBG] RecWitness.

    Unfortunately, this deck was not my creation. However, I'm afraid the original poster ( over at MTGS ) has let the thread die, so I've decided to post it over here.

    RecWitness:

    Lands
    1 Volrath's Stronghold
    3 Verdant Catacombs
    3 Windswepth Heath
    3 Marsh Flats
    3 Bayou
    3 Savannah
    2 Scrubland
    1 Tree of Tales
    1 Forest
    2 Swamp

    Creatures
    4 Tarmogoyf
    4 Dark Confidant
    2 Qasali Pridemage
    4 Eternal Witness
    3 Kitchen Finks

    Non-creatures
    3 Swords to Plowshares
    3 Thoughtseize
    3 Cabal Therapy
    3 Unearth
    3 Enlightened Tutor
    1 Sensei's Divining Top
    1 Pithing Needle
    3 Pernicious Deed
    1 Recurring Nightmare

    Sideboard
    1 Tormod's Crypt
    1 Swords to Plowshares
    1 Pithing Needle
    1 Relic of Progenitus
    3 Duress
    1 Thorn of Amethyst
    1 Ethersworn Canonist
    1 Wheel of Sun and Moon
    2 Engineered Plague
    3 Krosan Grip


    Some card choice explanation:
    Unearth: Enables me to recur without tutoring for the Recurring Nightmare. Very strong early game when I can land a Pridemage or Finks.
    Dark Confidant/Sensei's Divining Top: Strong cards in general. I run a pretty standard Legacy curve. Considering taking this out for a more defensive/fattier critter.
    Cabal Therapy: It's pretty much Thoughtseize without the life loss in my deck. With a Witness, I'm able to punish those who play conservatively once they've seen Deed. Also provides a sac outlet for Confidant. I frequently toy with the numbers on Seize/Therapy.
    Enlightened Tutor + package: This was sort of my own doing. I basically cut a Top, Nightmare, and a mainboard Swords for this. Basically Nightmare was a dead card in my hand without Witness, so I wanted to reduce the number of copies to as few as possible.
    Toolbox sideboard: Meh, whatever. Varied hate for Needle, pretty much. There were initially 2-3 Engineered Explosives in place of a bunch of the 'yard hate, but I felt it was needed with the amount of Reanimator. I might replace a single Grip with EE, but I am more often than not tutoring for Deed over it.

    How do I win with this deck?
    The engine requires two ( not one ) Eternal Witnesses and obviously Recurring Nightmare. Retain priority after casting the Nightmare, and put it's ability on the empty stack targeting a Witness in your yard. This ensures that it'll never eat a Grip or any other spell/ability that isn't discard. Select your spell of choice ( Deed, Swords, Therapy ), or possibly recur a bunch of fat Goyfs. Proceed to rape.


    General matchup infoz:
    Obviously the engine is quite difficult to assemble, so your goal is to stall out aggressive decks early game. This deck has a very strong inevitability once it gets going; Deeding and Therapying multiple times ( like 5+ times ) means you will come out ahead in the late game. This archetype is where I'd want EE the most, as EE @ 1 kind of wrecks Zoo, Mongoose ( and most aggro decks ) and is much more efficient than Deed.

    Against control, you have a large number of efficient creatures to go on the offensive with, and Unearth plays a big role in keeping the pressure on here. Recurring Therapy is pretty win. Shouldn't have much trouble with this archetype.

    Combo is a pretty rough matchup. Chalice as a tutor target would be awesome, but our curve doesn't allow that. We do have quite a bit of targeted discard though. Our problems mostly arise from having too much variety in card choice. It creates inconsistency and often isn't fast or disruptive enough to beat out a resilient combo deck.

    Problems!
    RecWitness is sloooooow. Assembling the engine quickly requires a lot of deck manipulation to grab two(!) Witnesses, as well as a whole lot of mana. You can do it with Witness and another creature, of course, but unless it's Finks it's still kind of terrible. It's also pretty mana hungry. As you can see, I run 24 lands. Often it leads to flooding if I don't have Top or Confidant in play.

    The slowness in my deck creates a lot of issues. I can't effectively race control/combo as well as I'd like to, and my disruption isn't aimed at stopping a large horde of critters early on. Since I am lacking in all three of these matchups, my board is kind of all over the place. This is pretty much where E. Tutor is amazing. However that doesn't really address the issue!

    Adding ramp is kind of shitty, as we have enough stuff that doesn't interact with board or opponent. I don't think the tempo gained from Moxen is worth the card disadvantage. Need some ideas here. A potential option for me would be adding in Noble Hierarch, as it lets me play out my two drops around Daze and generates needed mana later in the game. It also lets me win Goyf battles and gives me something to do first turn when I don't have discard.


    Another problem is symmetrical, recurring 'yard hate. It shrinks 'Goyf and means my engine becomes dead weight. I've got the tools to combat it, but I am looking for more suggestions to proactively stop such shenanigans. I mainboard Needle to fight Wretch/Relic/Knight/etc., but it's often difficult to keep my Needle on the board with the amount of Deeding going on.


    Finally, I kind of feel like the engine is suboptimal. However, I really like the theme and feel like Recurring Nightmare enables me to have a relatively small engine ( and thus more quality cards not dedicated to it ), as opposed to something like Slide which requires Loam + cycle cards. I had entertained the idea for a while, but Slide is decidedly more control than what this deck aims to be. If you have any suggestions for the engine, suggest away! Obviously it should be recursive to keep the nature of the deck, but really I am looking for any improvement you guys can offer.

    Also Swords really really hurts the engine in this deck >:

    -Uncoordinated.

  2. #2

    Re: [WBG] RecWitness.

    No action in this thread? Surely someone must have something to offer.

    Also, I'm not sure if there's a way to bump without double posting.

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