does this deck get significantly worse due to veil of summer?
-rob
Not really, you can switch back to the Lab Maniac win con if you wanna play around it but it is totally unneeded imo.
They still have to play with 7 cards in hand so regardless of the piece of interation they will have, you just Pact it, kill them on turn 1 or block it with Chancellors or you will lose anyway.
Anyone toying with Underworld Breach and LED?
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
Nope. Any suggestions?
My gut feeling is that Breach isn't for us; we only have significant gy fuel _after_ we've comboed, so if we're playing it as post-combo protection, it adds 2 (and a color!) to our combo turn, which is hard. If we're playing it as a way to re-combo after getting a spy countered or something, then we probably only have ~5 cards in the yard anyway (roughly a full hand worth, minus some for moxen/guides), which means we have to build up the mana on top of only having one flashback spell available, at the cost of 2 mana; seems like it doesn't really work.
The Storm discord's been doing some tinkering with Breach+Brain Freeze, though general consensus seems to be that it's just another glass cannon deck probably on the high tide/cephalid breakfast tier (in that more meta options fill the same role, but better). I want them to be wrong though :P
Ooh, something that _is_ for us: https://i.redd.it/zq1docm2ld941.png
TL;DR:
Thassa's Oracle
Creature - Merfolk Wizard, UU
When ~ ETB, look at the top X cards of your library, where X is your devotion to blue. (some stuff that doesn't matter for us) If X is greater than or equal to the number of cards in your library, you win the game.
Better DR win-con than Lotleth, because it doesn't target and is immune to removal in response!
This also wins the game vs ANY single piece of graveyard hate if you hardcast it. Very unlikely to have 6 mana with double UU, but still.
This wins vs Leyline of Sanctity and Veil of Summer.
Doesn't requires you to have a specific number of creatures in the deck.
There is a very small, very very small, chance of hardcasting it and beat any piece of graveyard hate.
This is the best win condition ever for this deck, hands down.
So who is going to come up with a list first with new wincon?
-1 Lotleth Giant +1 New Win Con
someone could post a deck
The Deck by Brian Weissman, 1996
4 City of Brass
4 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
3 Plains
3 Strip Mine
4 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
1 Black Lotus
2 Disrupting Scepter
1 Jayemdae Tome
1 Mirror Universe
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
2 Serra Angel
2 Moat
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Counterspell
4 Mana Drain
2 Red Elemental Blast
4 Disenchant
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Amnesia
1 Braingeyser
1 Timetwister
1 Time Walk
1 Recall
1 Regrowth
Sideboard
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Circle of Protection: Red
2 Dust to Dust
1 Zuran Orb
1 Balance
2 Blood Moon
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Mana Short
1 Amnesia
1 Feldon's Cane
in all seriousness, this is from a recent dump from mtgo, now you can cut the sutured ghoul + dragon breath (prob to get around veil of summer) for this new blue guy, and then you have 1 more card slot.
4 Balustrade Spy
2 Chancellor of the Tangle
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
3 Narcomoeba
4 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Sutured Ghoul
4 Tinder Wall
4 Undercity Informer
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Dread Return
4 Unmask
4 Dark Ritual
4 Manamorphose
4 Pact of Negation
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
2 Bridge from Below
1 Dragon Breath
SB:
2 Ashen Rider
3 Empty the Warrens
4 Force of Vigor
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Sickening Shoal
-rob
Lists without Once Upon a Time are suboptimal.
Mathematically speaking the best possible list is:
4 Balustrade Spy
4 Undercity Informer
4 Once Upon a Time
This gives the highest chance to have a win condition in the opening hand.
Once Upon a Time gives a 57,5% chance to hit a Spy and SSG/ESG, you also have a chance to hit Wild Cantor for mana filtering.
Even if you already have one Spy in hand, hitting a 2nd one for Chrome Mox imprint on black is pretty good.
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Summoner's
4 Wild Cantor
or 4 Manamorphose + 1 Wild Cantor
Highest chance to have a black mana source in the opener
4 Manamorphose + 1 Wild Cantor is the highest possible, but I like Wild Cantor much more with OUAT in the deck now.
Wild Cantor also dodges Pierce, Snare, Flusterstorm and Force of Negation, can be played on turn 1 with Tangle, requires less resources overall than Manamorphose.
Manamorphose has some props like being better in multiples and the chances of gambling for the 4th mana source. So there are still some merits and reasons to play it.
With 17 black mana sources your chances of not having it in the opener is only 8.3% in 7 cards and 12% in 6 cards.
If you don't have a black mana source in the opener you MUST take a mulligan, because you will draw one in 3 draws at average and you have a 55% chance of drawing one in the next 2 draws.
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Chancellor of the Tangle
if you add the 4 Petal/Mox/Pact to the equation you have 32 mana sources in the deck, which means:
32 Sources (7 cards 6 cards 5 cards): 4.2, 3.6, 3.0
Thats the average number of mana sources in your opener. So you MUST have at least 32 mana sources in the deck, EVEN POST BOARD.
You can keep hands with 3 mana sources, especially on the draw, but hands with only 2 mana sources are a mulligan.
4 Narcomoeba
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Thassa's Oracle
1 Dread Return
That's the minimal number of cards you need to win the game.
Thassa's Oracle is a straight better upgrade to Lotleth Giant for multiple reasons. Some aren't obvious and are related to the sideboard mapping etc...it also makes some sideboard cards better.
Given that you have 7 FREE SLOTS, either for a 2nd Therapy + Bridge, or for Pact of Negation / Chancellor of the Annex, you could also potentially shave the 4th Cantor and free up another slot.
If you play 4 Manamorphose + 1 Wild Cantor you have 6 slots and that means that your best bet is probably 4 Pact/Chancellor + 2nd Therapy and 1 Bridge.
Personally I like to play less dead cards and go with the no bridge one Therapy route and play 8 maindeck protections vs counterspells (Chancellor + Pact) on MTGO. May be different in paper, I don't like to build for the specific LGS metas tho.
Hey there Jax- (and everyone else),
Thanks for your analysis, is greatly appreciated! Just one thing I've realized:
The "minimal core" you propose are 55 cards, so we have only 5 slots left, not 7. I agree with you when you say that 8 protection cards are mandatory, so that's 3 extra slots that we should free. Maybe we could cut one OUaT and one Cantor, but which other card do you think we can shave?
Thanks!
Colorless is the new blue
http://ooh---shiny.blogspot.com
Hey thank you!
Good catch. Unfortunately your best bet would be to play only 4 Protections or go down to only 1 Cantor.
My list on MTGO has 4 Pact 4 Chancellor and only 1 Cantor. That means that my chance of NOT having a black mana source in the opening hand is around 16% and that I'll draw a black mana source in 4 draws on average and the chance of me drawing a black mana source in the next two draws is 45%.
In sum I mulligan 8% more with this version.
But I also tried the 4 Pact no Chancellors version which is better in goldfishing situations but worse vs interaction.
4 Chancellor instead of Pact is also viable and it is better vs various stuff like discards or Chalice etc... but I think it is way worse on the draw overall.
So pick your venom. Mathematically speaking the 17 black mana sources 4 Protection is more consistent at goldfishing, but you just scoop to counterspells most of the time unless you have really good hands.
At the same time if you play against non blue decks and you can't go off because your Wild Cantor is a Pact/Chancellor instead, thats very bad.
The deck didn't USED to play Chancellor of the Tangle and did fine.
Could you swap the tangles for annexes, seeing as OUAT can also function as a mana tutor?
Then you can fit in the 4 pacts +1 flex spot, which could maybe be another source of mana or something?
4 Balustrade Spy
4 Undercity Informer
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Narcomoeba
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Thassa's Oracle
1 Dread Return
Stock list. Can't really mess with any of those in my opinion.
4 Pact of Negation
4 Chancellor of the Annex
Cards that we want to fit in the maindeck to slighty improve game 1 vs Fair Blue.
So we have 9 slots.
Once Upon a Time
Wild Cantor
Chancellor of the Tangle
Tinder Wall
Those are the flex slots.
You MUST play at LEAST 1 Wild Cantor.
Once Upon a Time is just too good imo. Finding a win condition has always been a bottleneck for this deck, it also finds extra mana sources and mana filters.
I'd play 4.
So we are left with 4 slots.
I think that Tinder Wall may be better than Chancellor of the Tangle now that OUAT is in the deck.
You can go with only 1 Wild Cantor and 4 Tinder Wall and make the build very weak at having the black mana source (also OUAT isn't very helpful there), or you can go down to 30 mana sources, which is the ABSOLUTELY minimal number to get 4 mana sources in the opener, at average (and at 7 cards).
So like 3 Wild Cantor / 2 Tinder Wall , or 2/3, or 1 Wild Cantor / 4 Tinder Wall
I played a league with Thassa's Oracle today, 4-1d
Lost to a fair blue deck with Leylines.
Won vs a fair blue deck with double Leyline in play + Daze + Force of Will.
I played Undercity Informer go and a couple of turns later I drew the 2nd blue mana source for Thassa's Oracle into the win. It was pretty cool.
That made me think if there is a way to increase the number of blue mana sources in the deck, like playing multiple Thassa's Oracle post board could be a kinda cool way to beat graveyard hate.
This is my current list btw:
4 Balustrade Spy
4 Undercity Informer
4 Once Upon a Time
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Tinder Wall
1 Wild Cantor
4 Pact of Negation
4 Chancellor of the Annex
4 Narcomoeba
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Thassa's Oracle
1 Dread Return
-----------
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Force of Vigor
4 Veil of Summer
3 Nature's Claim
Nature's Claim got significantly better now with Thassa's because the life total doesn't matter anymore.
Veil was a test, just for fair blue on the draw, Guttural Response is probably better but Veil + ESG protections vs discard is useful sometimes so idk.
Lost rd1 game 3 because I failed to find the black source. I was expecting that because im only on 13 sources, but I still think that the maindeck protections are absolutely necessary.
Have you tried Sphinx of Foresight? Again, I've not played this deck in a while, but I liked it with Force of Will in my testing when they spoiled it.
I took your point a while back about Once upon a Time, but do you feel like a quad gets redundant? I think the card is great, but it falls flat if we have more than one. Worse than multiple Chrome Moxes imo.
I still think a singleton Manamorphose is useful. I cut back to one the last time I was playing the deck and didn't have a lot of problems with color fixing. Two copies pretty much solved it completely iirc, but that was a while ago.
How do you feel about Chancellor? I'm on the fence about it (and have been for some time) because it doesn't stack well and doesn't add relevant colors under a Chrome Mox. Of course, I don't know that there's a better option; I find I'm a black card short to pitch to Unmask as often as I get it to work.
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
is a GB creature worth a slot for Summoner's Pact into Chrome mox? Like Spanish Inquisition does?
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