Pyromancer Ascension

[swarm187]

Hello All!
As a Survival player, I've been looking at decks to transition into if the touted banning does, in fact, take place. My feelings on that topic aside, I feel like I've stumbled onto a solid deck idea that I wanted to share with you here. Hopefully, I'll get some feedback after posting this, and after my subsequent playtesting updates. That way I can feel out whether this thing has a leg to stand on, come Legacy season.
The premise of Pyromancer Ascension decks is nothing new, but for those of you who never played against the strong Standard version of this deck when it was around, I'll go over the nuts and bolts:

Basically, in the Standard-legal version, the goal was to use library manipulation/card advantage spells like Preordain and Foresee, along with burn spells, to get an active Pyromancer Ascension with counters on it. The deck is creatureless, actually relying on burn to put your opponent at zero.
Now, there was more to it, but the basic gameplan was to get an active Ascension online and use copied burn spells alongside Time Warp to take several turns in a row and crush your opponent.

The upsides to this deck were plentiful, and the downsides, at least in the Standard environment, were pretty minimal. Obviously, the deck is fast, resilient, and quite hard to disrupt. Even without an active Ascension, the deck could survive and win a game or two. The card advantage generated by the blue spells was often too much for your opponent to keep up with. Burn could handle almost anything they put on the board, and then beat them in the face fairly easily.
Now, the drawbacks of this deck will only be magnified in the Legacy environment. If you can disrupt the early Ascension, this deck might just wither in the Legacy arena. Counter-Top might be a bear to get through as well. The reason this deck was so strong in Standard was due, in large part, to the lack of good counterspells and answers in the format at that time. Well, we all know that Legacy has a plentiful array of answers for Enchantments and silver bullets for almost every occasion.

The big thing that this archetype has going for it is that, almost all of the spells used to power it in Standard have stronger, more powerful facsimiles in Legacy. You have access to MUCH stronger cards in Legacy, which makes this deck more threatening right out of the gate. It's also more resilient due to the counter suite that can be cut and pasted into the archetype.

Enough babble, here's the decklist I came up with this afternoon, along with some card explanations and options afterwards:

4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
3x Intuition
4x Force of Will
4x Daze
2x Echoing Truth
2x Time Warp
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Chain of Plasma
3x Volcanic Fallout
4x Pyromancer Ascension

4x Scalding Tarn
4x Volcanic Island
8x Island
6x Mountain


First off, let me get into a few of the cards choices. Most of these are fairly self-explanatory, but I'd like to share my reasoning behind a few of these cards.
Ponder vs. Preordain- There's actually a lot of merit to each of these cards, and in the end, I feel like it's almost a toss-up. Each one has good synergy in here, and both of these cards lets you dig a little into your library. I went with Ponder because it gives you the option of shuffling away what you dig up, which is just a shade better than putting it on the bottom of your library, IMO. Again, there isn't much difference here, I plan on testing them both.
Ponder also beat out Impulse, based on the fact that I was looking to fill the 1 CMC hole.

Intuition is the real reason why I like this deck in Legacy. There's nothing in Standard that has the power of Intuition in this build, and I feel like it takes the archetype to a whole new level. The ability to fetch three spells, instantly, and know that you're going to put that counter on your Ascension is absolutely amazing. Plus, it an amazing way to fix your hand with whatever gas/counterspells you think you might need at the end of your opponent's turn. I think this will be a real star in the deck, even at three. I dropped the 4th copy after realizing that copying Intuition wasn't really what I was looking to do. Is it bad? Not necessarily, but I don't think it's essential to the deck working.

Echoing Truth is a beating against any type of aggro build in Legacy. Goblins, Merfolk, and even most Zoo decks will really have a hard time with this card. It's basically an insurance card, just in case something gets through my counterspells that I can't deal with by burning it out. Planeswalkers, enchantments, artifacts, Vengevines, etc. can all be dealt with, instantly, by a well placed Echoing Truth. It actually beat out Chain of Vapor for my dedicated bounce slots, mostly because I thought the Chain's ability to copy itself might hurt me in the long run. Anyone facing down an Ascension build would happily let go of one of their lands to bounce an active Ascension, especially since it's the only non-land perminant in the deck.

Chain of Plasma seems like an awesome fit here because I can pitch cards to it if my opponent gets the funny idea to send it back at me. It also has solid power, dealing 3 to a player or critter for CMC of 2, at instant speed. When looking for solid burn cards, this thing quickly outpaced the rest of the field. The only spell that gave me pause to think was Staggershock, but I'm not sure how powerful that effect would be coming down for 3. Plus, you have to exile it after you play it, which means it directly flies in the face of Ascension. What are your thoughts?

Volcanic Fallout is an awesome way to deal with pesky dudes and aggro strategies. The fact that it can't be countered is crucial in the Counter-Top matchup, especially when fighting the deadly Merfolk decks that are running everywhere.


Alright, now that I've let you in on my rationale behind some of the card choices, I'm going to try to break down some of the strengths/weakenesses that this deck might have.
First of all, the curve for this deck tops out at 5 in Time Warp, but there are only 6 cards that have a CMC higher than 3 in the whole deck. 4 of those are Force of Wills, which is something you'll be playing for free. The curve is SUPER aggressive and puts your opponent on a quick clock.

One drawback i thought about when building this deck is it's apparent dependancy on the graveyard. While I plan to test this extensively, I feel like the graveyard hate might not be as much of an issue as it is with other decks that use cards in the yard. For one, you don't really need the cards to stay in the graveyard, they just have to be there long enough to activate the Ascension. While this opens the deck up to disruption via graveyard hate, there are plenty of decks out there that are fighting that same battle and winning tournaments.

Another strength of this deck is it's reactive abilities. The spells in this list can basically account for any threat right now in the Legacy format. Almost the entire deck is instant speed, and that gives you the versatility to play aggressively or in a more controlled style.

The drawback to that same line of thinking is that you may get stuck not drawing what you need to deal with your opponent's threats. You have ample ways of searching and manipulating your library, but the lacks of bodies on your side of the table may end up losing you some games.

Finally, I think a major plus for this deck is the available card pool for the sideboard. Depending on what route you want to take, you could sideboard in a suite of dudes that crush face after your opponent has sided out all of their removal or you could put in more strick control elements like Jace TMS and Counter-Top to lock the game out completely. You have access to cards like Chill and Submerge that help to deal with aggro, and you can get something like Grapeshot or Banefire as strong outside-the-box finishers in games 2 and 3.

Lastly, there are TONS of cards that I haven't had the opportunity to even consider throwing in here. I actually consdered splashing green as well, for some more options. Some of the following could make huge impacts on this deck:
Accumulated Knowledge
Spell Snare
Propaganda
Ground Seal
Manamorphose
Regrowth
Eternal Witness
Trygon Predator
Wee Dragonauts
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn


Overall, I'm excited to test this baby out. I always welcome suggestions and discussion about card choices, as I know I'm not a perfect deckbuilder. I plan on throwing this into sleeves and testing it next week. I'll post some updates as soon as I can!

[J160711]

I would use the portal 3 kingdoms version of time warp. It doesn't target so it can't get misdirected or anything. Not a huge deal but it certainly seems better

[Pastorofmuppets]

I would use the portal 3 kingdoms version of time warp. It doesn't target so it can't get misdirected or anything. Not a huge deal but it certainly seems better

Capture of Jingzhou
Also, the T2 version of the deck used Call to Mind to loop Time Walks to guarantee a win once Ascension was online. Maybe you should look into using a similar engine.

[Aggro_zombies]

Capture of Jingzhou
Also, the T2 version of the deck used Call to Mind to loop Time Walks to guarantee a win once Ascension was online. Maybe you should look into using a similar engine.

I believe GerryT wrote about a version of Ascension just after Columbus that used Regrowth and Manamorphose. He played and top 8'd a small tournament with it, IIRC, and the list looked interesting but unstable.

Basically, the biggest problem with Ascension is the same problem old builds of Survival had: they were garbage without their namesake enchantment in play. Krosan Grip is still a commonly played card, as are Nature's Claim and Spell Snare. Do you really want to be the deck whose game plan is virtually completely dependent on finding, casting, and protecting a two mana enchantment? I'm not seeing enough upside in Forking all your spells to make it worth it. I mean, you're basically a delayed combo deck, making you automatically worse than storm-based decks or Emrakul/Show and Tell decks.

Also, Fallout should definitely be Firespout. Two damage just doesn't kill that much anymore.

[Pastorofmuppets]

I believe GerryT wrote about a version of Ascension just after Columbus that used Regrowth and Manamorphose. He played and top 8'd a small tournament with it, IIRC, and the list looked interesting but unstable.

Basically, the biggest problem with Ascension is the same problem old builds of Survival had: they were garbage without their namesake enchantment in play. Krosan Grip is still a commonly played card, as are Nature's Claim and Spell Snare. Do you really want to be the deck whose game plan is virtually completely dependent on finding, casting, and protecting a two mana enchantment? I'm not seeing enough upside in Forking all your spells to make it worth it. I mean, you're basically a delayed combo deck, making you automatically worse than storm-based decks or Emrakul/Show and Tell decks.

Also, Fallout should definitely be Firespout. Two damage just doesn't kill that much anymore.

You know, SnT-Emrakul doesn't take up that many slots.

[Scatterbrain]

This deck seems like it would be better off being more about Burn, less about control. Taking infinite turns is cool, but trying to resolve a 5 mana sorcery in Legacy is stupid.

This is what I would play:

4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
4x Intuition
4x Force of Will
4x Daze
4x Chain Lightning
4x Magma Jet
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Fireblast
4x Pyromancer's Ascension

4x Scalding Tarn
8x other fetches
4x Volcanic Island
2x Island
2x Mountain

The whole idea here is that the deck is still quite competitive even if you never get the Ascension. If you do, it will just double up your last few spells you play to win (I guess that means it is effectively drawing you a few cards and making a few mana...not bad). The whole deck seems worse than either just playing Burn or a real Combo deck.

[thickasabrick]

FWIW, here's the GerryT list:


4 Pyromancer Ascension

4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Intuition
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Manamorphose
3 Repeal

1 Grapeshot
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
2 Regrowth

5 Island
1 Mountain
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
1 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard:
2 Dispel
3 Krosan Grip
4 Pyroblast
2 Spell Pierce
4 Submerge

I messed around with this deck a bit on MTGO Legacy, but unfortunately Regrowth doesn't exist online yet so I had to use Call to Mind - and that one mana makes a pretty huge difference in practice.

[Dormant Seer]

Maybe it would be too much for one deck shell (6-8 slots) but, to me, Pyromancer Ascension is very reminiscent of Izzet Guildmage. Or maybe playing both cards would add some consistency ?


Rule question : If one casts a spell that would put a counter on Pyromancer Ascension, then copies it with Izzet Guildmage, would one happen to put two counters on the Ascension ?


Greetings,
DS.


Edit :
Esper3k: right, thank you. I should have known this but...

[Esper3k]

What about using Punishing Fire with Intuition? Seems like a really good way to get Ascension active quickly?

[Esper3k]

Maybe it would be too much for one deck shell (6-8 slots) but, to me, Pyromancer Ascension is very reminiscent of Izzet Guildmage. Or maybe playing both cards would add some consistency ?


Rule question : If one casts a spell that would put a counter on Pyromancer Ascension, then copies it with Izzet Guildmage, would one happen to put two counters on the Ascension ?


Greetings,
DS.

Copying a spell with Izzet Guildmage won't do anything for Pyromancer Ascension. PA triggers when a spell is cast - putting a copy of a spell on the stack is not the same as casting it.

[rockout]

Do you really want to be the deck whose game plan is virtually completely dependent on finding, casting, and protecting a two mana enchantment?

Can I use that same logic on not playing survival?

[swarm187]

Thanks for all of the responses! I appreciate the fragility of a deck built around an enchantment, especially since the format has warped around the prevalence of SotF.
I feel like GerryT's list optimizes the strengths of Ascension, without being chained to it as a gameplan. I plan on testing it over the next week or so, and we'll see how it shakes out.

Adding Show & Tell + Emrakul seems interesting, although there isn't a lot of room to fit those cards in. I'll test both and see if I can make it work.

[EddieO]

I've played a version of GerryT's deck. The deck can be crazy good.......unlike Storm based combo, its much more resilent to any type of discard. The deck is nutty good, but Krosn Grip can be a problem, and anything main decking pridemage is not fun. Counterbalance is a joke if you have resolved your enchantment....firespout superior in every way to fallout.

Later EddieO

[Technics]

Don't mean to gravedig, but i figured this was better than starting yet ANOTHER thread.

Here is the list I am running. It's basically like 2-3 cards off Gerry T's list.


// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
6 [SOM] Island (1)
1 [SOM] Mountain (1)
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
4 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
2 [R] Tropical Island
2 [R] Volcanic Island
1 [ON] Wooded Foothills

// Spells
4 [ZEN] Pyromancer Ascension
4 [NE] Accumulated Knowledge
4 [CST] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [TE] Intuition
4 [M11] Lightning Bolt
4 [SHM] Manamorphose
4 [M10] Ponder
4 [M11] Preordain
2 [R] Regrowth
3 [NPH] Gitaxian Probe

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [GP] Repeal
SB: 2 [WWK] Dispel
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 3 [5E] Pyroblast
SB: 4 [NE] Submerge




So far the deck has been a total BLAST to play. It is also not that bad. It hurts if they can keep you off Ascension for a bit, as it puts you on the ropes, and i normally have a hard time winning from there. However if you can land it turn 2-3, your golden.

Of course I don't ever think this will be a tier 1 deck, but are their any other tweeks to make to make it more competitive?

[Darkenslight]

// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
6 [SOM] Island (1)
1 [SOM] Mountain (1)
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
4 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
2 [R] Tropical Island
2 [R] Volcanic Island
1 [ON] Wooded Foothills

// Spells
4 [ZEN] Pyromancer Ascension
4 [NE] Accumulated Knowledge
4 [CST] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [TE] Intuition
4 [M11] Lightning Bolt
4 [SHM] Manamorphose
4 [M10] Ponder
4 [M11] Preordain
2 [R] Regrowth
3 [NPH] Gitaxian Probe

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [GP] Repeal
SB: 2 [WWK] Dispel
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 3 [5E] Pyroblast
SB: 4 [NE] Submerge

I'm fairly certain you'd want Telling Time or soemthing similar due to the filtering power, as well as Impulse. Are these worth testing here in one of the one-drop slots?

[Benjammn]

I'm fairly certain you'd want Telling Time or soemthing similar due to the filtering power, as well as Impulse. Are these worth testing here in one of the one-drop slots?

People like paying only 1 mana for their cantrips.

Getting randomly blown out by Daze or Spell Pierce hurts.

[Darkenslight]

People like paying only 1 mana for their cantrips.

Getting randomly blown out by Daze or Spell Pierce hurts.

hmm....How essential are the MAnamorphose? Also, at the top end, a single Time Spiral seems like it could be epically hilarious with Pyro active. I get to refill my library, untap lands, and cast spells in between the two? Sure thang!

[Hunding Gjornersen]

Manamorphose has so much synergy with Pyromancer Ascension it's insane. It's a free cantrip, so it helps get ascension active. Then it's +2 mana of any color and + 1 card advantage every time you see one.

[Technics]

I'm fairly certain you'd want Telling Time or soemthing similar due to the filtering power, as well as Impulse. Are these worth testing here in one of the one-drop slots?

Once your going off, it's really nice to pay U to draw 2-3 cards rather than pay 1U to draw 2-3. Also Daze and spell snare/pierce hurt, and Mental Misstep is not a big enough reason to not run the 1cc cantrips.

hmm....How essential are the MAnamorphose? Also, at the top end, a single Time Spiral seems like it could be epically hilarious with Pyro active. I get to refill my library, untap lands, and cast spells in between the two? Sure thang!

Manamorphose is basically then entire reason to run this deck. With 2 regrowths it goes infinate (for your deck) and lets you generate the mana needed to combo off. Without Manamorphose the deck would be fun, but you need the mana generation to be able to combo with the deck.

Even without Regrowth you can still get pretty far with the manamorphoses's.