Get Enter the Infinite into your graveyard. Cast Mizzix's Mastery. Exile 3 Simian Spirit Guides or cast 3 Lotus Petals. Cast Conflagrate, Lightning Storm, or Laboratory Maniac. Win.
I have no idea if this combo is worth exploring given that there is already a powerful legacy deck, Reanimator, that depends on getting an expensive card from the graveyard into play. Thus this combo will obviously get hit sideways by a lot of Reanimator hate. And it is not clear that it offers major advantages over Reanimator, either: it is slower. Reanimator pays BB to Reanimate a Griselbrand, while casting Enter the Infinite from the grave costs B + 3R (Entomb + Mizzix's Master).
However, I think it is still worth exploring because it does offer certain advantages to the traditional "reanimate a fatty" route:
- Win on the spot.
- Can play a more controlling game.
- Potential lategame win by overloading Mizzix's Master and flashing back your whole graveyard.
- Doesn't cost any life.
In short, Mizzix's Mastery may be less aggressive than Reanimate and Exhume, but it also might be more powerful.
I have not really started work on a decklist, but I do want to make a list of cards that are worthy of consideration:
Mizzix's Master: Obviously we're playing some number of these.
Enter the Infinite: And these.
Lotus Petal: Acceleration that enables our kill after we combo. We probably want 3-4.
Simian Spirit Guide: An alternative to Lotus Petal which is stronger against Daze, and can block, but can only make red mana.
Entomb: Can put Enter the Infinite in your graveyard.
Careful Study: See above.
Faithless Looting: Careful Study which doesn't pitch to FoW, but has flashback.
Brainstorm: When playing blue...
Force of Will: Again, if playing blue...
Daze: Protect the combo.
Pact of Negation: An alternative way to protect the combo. Other cheap counterspells include Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm.
Thoughtseize: Protect the combo, or dump Enter the Infinite in your graveyard.
Ancient Tomb: Acceleration.
City of Traitors: And more acceleration.
Lightning Bolt: Kill Deathrite Shaman.
Sudden Shock: Make sure they can't stop you from killing Deathrite Shaman.
Burning Wish: Finds both halves of the combo. Now you just need to discard one...
There are many more where these came from, obviously. People have suggested an all-in red version of storm playing Rite of Flame and Seething Song, which could have the alternate gameplan of overloading Mizzix's Mastery and flashing back a ton of ritual effects to do...something. It's that last "something" bit that makes me feel like this is a worse plan than just binning Enter the Infinite and winning outright.
Looking forward to hearing all your thoughts. Let get brewing!
==========================================================================================
Potential UR Burning Wish list:
3 Mizzix's Mastery
3 Enter the Infinite
4 Burning Wish
4 Careful Study
4 Faithless Looting
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Sudden Shock
4 Lotus Petal
2 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
4 Volcanic Island
3 Island
1 Mountain
URb is likely to be more powerful than UR, but I had trouble balancing the conflicting roles of Entomb and Burning Wish in my initial draft of this deck. Burning Wish wants you to have discard in your hand, such as Careful Study and Faithless Looting, not tutors like Entomb. You can, of course, Entomb for Faithless Looting. But this is rather slow... Still, the Wish + Entomb build probably offers more raw power than just the UR build.
The URb build, as I conceptualize it, would likely play 4 Entomb in place of 1 Careful Study and 3 Faithless Looting. I'd like to play Thoughtseize maindeck, but cutting Daze brings the blue count dangerously low for Force of Will, forcing us to play either 3 FoW, 3 Thoughtseize, 2 Daze, or to stick with the Daze / FoW package:
3 Mizzix's Mastery
3 Enter the Infinite
4 Burning Wish
3 Careful Study
1 Faithless Looting
4 Entomb
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Sudden Shock
4 Lotus Petal
2 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
3 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Mountain
SB:
1 Conflagrate
1 Mizzix's Mastery
1 Enter the Infinite
1 Thoughtseize
1 Massacre
BR builds are also possible, and seem pretty cool:
3 Mizzix's Mastery
3 Enter the Infinite
4 Burning Wish
4 Entomb
4 Faithless Looting
4 Thoughtseize
3 Duress
4 Sudden Shock
4 Lotus Petal
2 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
4 Badlands
2 Swamp
2 Mountain
That leaves 5 open slots.
May i suggest spelltwine or sins from the past as combo piece and personal tutor instead of burning wish?
I don't like those cards. Personal Tutor is card disadvantage and has never been strong in legacy. Sins from the Past is way too expensive to be strong; it's better to just play Burning Wish as additional Mizzix's Masteries. Same goes for Spelltwine.Originally Posted by TheG
You could use stuff like Quiet Speculation to drop, say, Army of the Damned in your graveyard. 4 mana, get 13 2/2 tokens seems kinda cool. Also don't die to -1/-1 effects etc. while presenting a good 1 turn clock.
Doesn't win on the spot though.
Is something with SnT possible? This list is kinda close to my 7wish-omni that won me a tournament a while ago. Intution is a great way to discard Mastery and Omni works well with TtI as well. This kind of build has great range, since it's harder to hate out through a single card like DrS.
Main:
3 Snt
2 Mizzix's Mastery
4 Omniscience
3 Enter the Infinite
3 Griselbrand
2 Intuition
4 Burning Wish
3 Izzet Charm
4 Brainstorm
2 Gitaxian Probe
4 Force of Will
2 Flusterstorm
3 Lotus Petal
2 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
3 City of Traitors
8 Fetch
3 Volcanic Island
3 Island
Potential boardslots (for Burning):
1 SnT
1 Mizzix
1 EtI
1 Ponder
1 Spiraling Embers (main win: EtI > 3 petal for SnT > Omni > Burning > Embers)
1 Overmaster
1 Pyroclasm
1 Faithless Looting
EDIT: almost forgot Dack Fayden, should be great in this kind of deck.
Last edited by Holmen; 11-10-2015 at 03:44 AM.
Speculation for Army + double Cabal Therapy seems really solid.
Rough Deck List for a Mizzix's Mastery combo deck.
Ideal turn structure:
1st - Land + Faithless/Careful Study/Brainstorm
2nd - Land + Mox (plus Discard/Imprinted Card)/Petal +Dack Faydan/(another Faithless/Careful Study/Brainstorm)
3rd - 2 mana Land + (if need be another Faithless/Careful Study) + Mizzix's + Daze/FoW --> EtI flashback --> Conflagrate kill.
4 Dack Faydan
4 Mizzix's Mastery
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Faithless
4 Careful Study
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Brainstorm
1 Conflagrate
14 Lands
5 2-Mana Lands
Slow compared to some combo decks, but it is basically all draw, with 8 protection spells.
Do any graveyard based decks run something like 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder, and then some number of Thought Scour to help get certain cards from hand into your grave? Or is it just a worse version of Faithless and Careless Study? I was just thinking of ways to flesh out a few more blue cards to increase the power of Force of Will.
So this is actually something .dk and I were talking about over the weekend, and I think there's some great potential here. I'm just starting based off a UR list I was brewing around Epic Experiment. Experiment itself is pretty mediocre, but combining Personal Tutor and Burning Wish felt really strong.
Mizzix's doesn't need nearly as much mana to go off, and doesn't really restrict your card choices the way Experiment does, so there's more room for protection. The downside is that you're actually reliant on the graveyard, and dealing with a two-card combo. Still, I think it's worth looking into. Haven't had much time to test yet, but here's what I've got on paper so far:
4 Personal Tutor
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Burning Wish
2 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Izzet Charm
2 Faithless Looting
3 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Volcanic Island
1 Mountain
1 Island
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Polluted Delta
1 Conflagrate
1 Enter the Infinite
1 Mizzix's Mastery
4 Lotus Petal
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
SB: 1 Past in Flames
SB: 1 Grapeshot
SB: 1 Void Snare
SB: 1 Pyroclasm
SB: 1 Empty the Warrens
SB: 4 Young Pyromancer
SB: 2 Sulfur Elemental
SB: 2 Magus of the Moon
SB: 1 Enter the Infinite
SB: 1 Mizzix's Mastery
You can mostly ignore the board, it's just ripped from the other list with Mastery over Experiment (although Pryomancer postboard may still be correct). This is without any playtesting though, so there's a lot I'm not sure about. How many looting effects, how many red rituals, other mana sources, how much protection, places for Probe, Top, etc. On paper, baby Jace and Izzet Charm both seem super strong.
Black might also be correct for Entomb alone just because it negates the need for as many looting effects, but I'd like to start with straight UR and work out from there.
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
Hi everyone:
Because it doesn't win on the spot, it seems inferior to the Enter the Infinite route. However, the interaction between Army of the Dammed and Cabal Therapy, mentioned by VeniVidiVici, seems like it could be worth exploring. Such a route might require playing creatures, however, to make Therapy powerful even without Quiet Speculation. If not creatures, then Gitaxian Probe would certainly be necessary. I just am doubtful that this route will prove more powerful than Enter the Infinite --> Win.
I thought about SnT initially as well, but I don't like it generally because I think SnT is probably a stronger deck than this one, and if we're just shoving SnT into this deck, we'd be better off just playing SnT. However, I do think Mizzix's Mastery serves as a great wish target in any Burning Wish version of SnT. I just doubt it'll be good enough to be maindeck because, while not anti-synergistic with SnT, it accommodates a different gameplan. Feel free to prove me wrong, however.
Izzet Charm is freaking awesome and I'm so happy you reminded me of its existence. It serves as removal for DRS, protection for the combo, and a discard outlet. I think we can safely say that the core of the deck should be:
3 Mizzix's Mastery
3 Enter the Infinite
4 Burning Wish
4 Izzet Charm
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
Then, if we go the entomb route, we are adding:
4 Entomb
1 Crippling Fatigue
And if we don't, we are probably playing some amount of Intuition and maybe even of Dack Fayden. I'm not sure why you think Dack is amazing in this deck -- as he's essentially just a recurring Faithless Looting -- but he's certainly not bad.
I address this above, and agree.
This is very akin to the first list I posted above. I think Chrome Mox isn't great in a deck that wants to play Force of Will as well. I also like the flexibility Burning Wish provides.
I considered Ponder, but see it as worse than Careful Study effects in this deck. However, I might be wrong. The card is obviously great and could be worth playing in some number. However, counting on Ponder/Brainstorm + Thought Scour to dump cards in the yard seems terribly inefficient and not worth pursuing.
The black splash for entomb is easy because you are running so many fetch lands but i think that there are better options than entomb.
Since you have almost no removal or way to protect jace i think he's not a great option. Any removal opponent gets will go straight to him. If you like the flashback type ability that jace offers, i'd recommend snap caster. Snap is a blocker and always does what he is intended to do. Jace can get killed easily before he does anything.
Mizzix mastery is really important and I think you should run more than just 1 in the deck. The reason is because drawing it is ALWAYS better than having to tutor for it.
Izzet charm is actually EVERYTHING this deck wants so the number should be 4x.
Also, since you are expected to win on the spot, Pact of negation could easily be included as a 1-2 of.
Desperate ritual seems excessive and unnecessary. If you want to accelerate the combo you can work Ancient tomb / city of traitors into the mana base. The mana curve of this deck is similar to S&T so I know it could work here.
S&T runs 8-10 counterspells last time i checked. This deck should be running at least that many because it seems like the optimal amount to keep combo decks in check and buy time.
-4 desperate ritual
-4 rite of flame
-3 jace
+1 izzet charm
+1 pact of negation
+1 Faithless looting
+2 Mizzex Mastery
+2 Snapcaster?
+3 Ancient Tomb
+1 City of traitors
Last edited by apple713; 11-11-2015 at 07:21 AM.
Play 4 Card Blind!
Currently Playing
Legacy: Dark Depths
EDH: 5-Color Hermit Druid
Currently Brewing: [Deck] Sadistic Sacrament / Chalice NO Eldrazi
why cards are so expensive...hoarders
It seems to be a go-to for TES/ANT, so there's that. Those decks do run Therapy but aren't quite known to run a whole lot of creatures. And Gitaxian Probe is never bad for a combo deck.
You could also use Quiet Speculation to fetch stuff like Crippling Fatigue or Feeling of Dread to (temporarily) get rid of DRS before comboing off or Faithless Looting to get rid of that Army of the Damned that's stuck in your hand, to mention some utility.
Furthermore, Enter the Infinite itself doesn't do a thing. You still need a separate win-condition. That's why the DTT era OmniShow deck dropped it. Something like the Army doesn't need any other cards to win (and the double Therapy does make it pretty likely the tokens'll be there the next turn to stomp your opponent). Compare it to TES's Empty the Warrens for an easy 26 damage worth in tokens.
Another interesting aspect of the card is that it allows us to cast spells with suspend immediately. For example, Hyper Genesis. This might be usable somehow in someones brainstorming.
We cross-posted last night. I'm not sure I agree with the inclusion of Personal Tutor. I get that it gets all the combo pieces, but it's just a bad card. Why do you think it's correct to run only 1 Mizzix's Mastery and so many Tutors, instead of more Mastery and less tutors? It might make you more flexible, but it also slows you down and reveals your plan -- plus, Burning Wish offers all the flexibility of Personal Tutor, while also not being sorcery speed card disadvantage.
I get that Mystical Tutor was good. If we could make Personal Tutor good too, that would be awesome. I'm just skeptical.
Baby Jace is cool. I can see it being pretty vulnerable in this deck, though.
I'm not sure Snapcaster -- or Jace for that matter -- warrants a spot here. Both are slow (while powerful) and more suited to control than combo.
Desperate Ritual seems bad. Izzet Charm, as I've said above, is perfect, and I agree it should be a 4-of.
Why are you discounting Entomb? I'd love to not run it -- it seems a bit clunky -- but it's super powerful. I don't like needing to rely only on looting effects to bin EtI, since firing them off in multiples creates a ton of card disadvantage to the point where casting FoW might be difficult.
Finally, Pact of Negation -- I was hoping to play counters that could stop proactive interaction such as DRS or discard as well as counterspells, and thus have shied away from PoN. Sure, it's good once you resolve EtI, but so is having 4 FoW in your deck. I think PoN will remain not the best option -- just look how OmniTell moved away from it.
You could use Entomb to fetch those cards too, and it has the added benefit of grabbing EtI. I get that EtI needs another win-con maindeck, but you can just play Burning Wish + a bunch of accel and wish for Conflagrate, which costs a total of 2RRR -- not unreasonable in a deck running 4 Lotus Petal and 2-3 Simian Spirit Guide. Playing 1 Conflagrate maindeck would cut that cost down to RRR.
You could also just Quiet Speculation / Entomb for Army of the Damned or EtI if one is stuck in your hand, in lieu of getting Faithless Looting, which is why I think Looting isn't too good here.
I can see the argument for Army of the Dammed + 2 Therapy in a deck running 4 Therapy and 4 Gitaxian Probe. However, it still means being pretty (and I think too much) all-in on Quiet Speculation since Mizzix + Army without Therapy backup is pretty weak to combo and Terminus. Also, Terminus can still wreck you after an Army resolves even with double therapy, if they're just floating it on top with SDT.
In short: I think the EtI plan is less vulnerable and inherently more powerful.
This is also something I was thinking with lab man win condition. I'm glad that someone else thinks it may have potential. I like the quiet speculation package. Burning Wish is interesting as well. I'll have to give it more thought later. I think jace is very good in this deck as well. Looting your thing into the yard then basically getting two shots with mastery is nuts
Oh yeah I forgot about the Looting side of Jace. That gives it much more potential here IMO.
I actually love Personal tutor here with a bunch of looting effects, since it allows you to negate the biggest downside of the card. I know it pretty much got written off in traditional storm lists and Reanimator, but a large part of that is just how many critical cards it can't search up. Here, it gets every combo piece, a discard outlet, or even Burning Wish for a silver bullet from the board. It is slow, but we don't care about life total so the downsides are worth it for the consistency that running 8 tutors offers. I'm
The problem with running more copies of the combo pieces is that they're just dead cards on their own. It's not like we're ever trying to hardcast Infinite, and spending 3R to re-cast a cantrip is pretty mediocre. I could see Mastery having some utility outside the combo, but Infinite is definitely a card you never want to see more than one of.
Obviously I haven't tested that list at all, so I could be way off, but the 8-tutor package was definitely the best thing going for my Epic Experiement brew. This is a different combo though, so it's entirely possible that it needs an entirely different shell to be effective. I'll try to actually get some testing in this week to have more than just speculation to go off.
@Megadeus - Lab Man is definitely a potential wincon. It opens you up to removal, but at that point in the game you should have a 30-40 card hand with plenty of protection. I like it a little less than Conflagrate though since you still need 3 mana to cast him, but likely some additional amount to draw 2 cards, when Conflagrate wins off RRR.
Also...if I'm reading Mastery right, does it play around Grafdigger's Cage?
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
How about going Combo-Control?
4 Mizzix's Mastery
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Faithless Looting
4 Careful Study
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Spell Snare
4 Lighting Bolt
4 Izzet Charm
4 Brainstorm
1 Conflagrate
15 Lands
4 Lotus Petal
Plan to go off turn 3/4 and use the rest of the time to bolt creatures, counter spells, and sculpt your hand. This list looks simple, but the again its has 20 answers (Bolt, Charm, FOW, daze, Pierce) and 12 loot effects plus brainstorm. By turn 4 you should be able to go off depending on how many cards you have seen.
The issue is that this deck will always be worse than reanimator unless it goes control. Reanimator is just so much faster and more consistent. So the only way to justify this deck IMO is to slow way down and play it more like control with an opps I win button.
You do want to see EtI every game... so you can discard it. That's far easier than having to cast Personal Tutor and a looting effect. Yeah, the flexibility could be nice. I just think if you're already playing Burning Wish, it's probably not necessary. That said, test it and let us know.
It doesn't matter that Mastery and EtI suck on their own, they win the game when they're together. So you do want to see both of them each game (as I said above). I'm of the opinion that drawing them off a looting effect or wishing for them is more powerful than using Personal Tutor to find your 1-ofs. In your list, literally the only way you're going to assemble the combo in 90% of games is to Wish and Tutor for EtI and Mastery, since you won't naturally draw either. That seems slow. The lists playing just BW can at least naturally draw one of the combo pieces much of the time.
Seeing more than one EtI isn't even that bad: pitch it to FoW. Hell, we could add in a 1-of Misdirection.
Fair enough. I think if you're going full-on control baby Jace is worthy of some consideration. I also wonder about the ability of a control deck that plays 12 looting effects to keep enough cards in its hand to control anything. But who knows. I definitely think we want to be more controlling than both Reanimator and SnT, and are moving in that direction with the inclusion of Izzet Charm and possibly Baby Jace. I doubt Lightning Bolt does enough for this deck to be worth it, though.
Why Spell Snare over Pierce?
I'm worried that Daze slows us down too much when our wincon costs 3R.
A final thought: if playing Baby Jace, Entomb --> Mizzix's Mastery is another line that can lead to the win. Entomb could be good here!
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy + Intuition pile
4 Mizzix's Mastery
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Intuition -- *finds both*
3 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
1 Dack Fayden/Attunement/Faithless Looting
4 Careful Study
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Izzet Charm
1 Conflagrate
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Lotus Petal
3 Ancient Tomb
10 fetch
4 Island
2 Volcanic Island
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