Mardu Tainted Pact Control

[Rationalist]

Hello. I'm a long time (ish) Seattle Legacy rando and over the past 6 months or so I've been experimenting with a Mardu colored deck that I've had quite a lot of fun with. I've been a physics grad student for a while as well as raising a teenager so I don't play as regularly as I'd like, but I still felt the need to play something more fringe on occasion and the card Tainted Pact I found appealing. I've been running it off and on at the Card Kingdom Legacy Mondays as a variant of a Blood Moon deck and I have won and cashed with it often enough (if not remarkably often) to be encouraged to improve it, but I have few illusions about what it is. It still has a pointedly hard time taking a complete match off of Burn or Miracles, although I'm hoping the latter will be less of an issue from this point on.

I also want to say that I have found this deck surprisingly fun to play, as it can ask you to make upwards of 30 very rapid decisions after resolving a single spell, and there is enough not-immediately-evident nuance in those decisions (more on that later) that it is difficult for me to imagine this style of control becoming rote. First things first,

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Tainted Pact Oracle Text:

"Exile the top card of your library. You may put that card into your hand unless it has the same name as another card exiled this way. Repeat this process until you put a card into your hand or you exile two cards with the same name, whichever comes first."

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Deck List

Tutors:

3x Tainted Pact
1x Enlightened Tutor

Locks:

1x Blood Moon
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Humility
1x Pithing Needle
1x Phyrexian Revoker

Discard:

1x Hymn to Tourach
1x Collective Brutality
1x Thoughtseize
1x Cabal Therapy
1x Duress
1x Inquisition of Kozilek
1x Kolaghan's Command
1x Mardu Charm
1x Tidehollow Sculler

Removal:

1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Path to Exile
1x Fatal Push
1x Lightning Bolt
1x Forked Bolt
1x Chained to the Rocks
1x Go for the Throat
1x Zealous Persecution

Wincons:

1x Liliana of the Veil
1x Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1x Kaya, Ghost Assassin
1x Lingering Souls
1x Bitterblossom
1x Young Pyromancer
1x Monastery Mentor
1x Deathrite Shaman

Uncategorized Fuel:

1x Chrome Mox
1x Manamorphose
1x Painful Truths

Manabase:

9x Fetches, one of each save Misty Rainforest
1x Badlands
1x Scrubland
1x Plateau
1x Taiga
1x Mountain
1x Swamp
1x Snow-Covered Swamp
1x Plains
1x Snow-Covered Plains
1x Concealed Courtyard
1x Blackcleave Cliffs
1x City of Brass
1x Mana Confluence

Sideboard:

1x Magus of the Moon
1x Dead of Night
1x Rest in Peace
1x Sudden Demise
1x Containment Priest
1x Null Rod
1x Stony Silence
1x Pyroblast
1x Confusion in the Ranks
1x Mindbreak Trap
1x Ancient Grudge
1x Hide // Seek
3x Was Miracles Hate - Suggestions?

(This taxonomy is a little fishy as many of the pieces do multiple jobs by necessity, but I thought this the best way to present it)

Deck Thesis

The basic premise of the deck is to simply attempt to play the matching answers-to-threats and threats-to-answers game better than the opponent. To this end the deck is running 3 copies of the card Tainted Pact, which in this deck can be compared to an instant speed Demonic Tutor. Sometimes an opponent simply can't beat a Blood Moon or Ensnaring Bridge, what have you, and this decks attempts to exploit that aspect of the game without going all on in the relevancy of any individual lock piece (I want to be able to Blood Moon people somewhat consistently, but I don't want to have to run 6-8 copies of the effect and just hope it's good in the matchup). The trade-off of running this card is that in order to rely on it the deck must be almost entirely singletons (even the 4th Tainted Pact seemed to risky on paper), so this deck is about taking that weakness and attempting to turn it into an advantage. The more varied your threats, the less predictable you are and the harder it often is to line up the appropriate answer. The more varied your answers are, the greater the likelihood that you have one to interact with an arbitrary threat.

Traditionally this kind of variety is also inconsistency, but the strength of tutoring (it's own form of consistency) that we are buying in this trade is very appealing in a deck designed to leverage it, and the number of efficient and redundant effects with different card names printed over the game's history give us an opportunity to challenge the weight that 'same-card-title' has on 'consistency'. There is an abundance of good removal and good discard, so if turning that 2nd Thoughtseize into an Inquisition of Kozilek and that 2nd Lightning Bolt into a Forked Bolt can buy us instant speed Demonic Tutors, there's likely a niche there. In fact, this is more an amusing thought experiment than anything else, but I would put forward that however good or bad the card Tainted Pact was upon its original printing, that as more cards have been printed as history moves forward, Tainted Pact most likely has been becoming "better" in the abstract at a much faster rate than the vast majority of other cards. (Imagine how it would function in a world where they printed every card they'd ever consider reasonable;
t -> infinity, and how little of that is caught up in card name)

The mana base works much better than one might expect, simply due to the overabundance of utility they designed into the Fetchlands. That being said, the deck is still harder pressed than most 3-color decks to produce BB, WW, and RR, so only 4 such cards are included, as is a Manamorphose for both fixing, velocity, and Pyro/Mentor/Lavamancer synergy. The interaction is selected to be as general as possible, and the threats are largely chosen to function even under the existence of Ensnaring Bridge and/or Humility. Artifact and Enchantments have a tendency to be some of the most oppressive cards in the game, as answers for them are the most removed of any permanent type, especially main-board, so throwing a critical mass of Ensnaring Bridges and Blood Moons can often just overwhelm their answers.

Finally, when it comes to side-boarding - and the majority of games of Legacy do occur post-sideboard - your threats are often too varied to board against easily and intuitively, while you yourself can bring in more directed answers and then tutor for them during their end-step.

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Some notes on Specific Cards

Tainted Pact: As much as this deck is designed around this card, it is not necessary to draw it. This is not a combo deck, this is merely a "Tainted Pact" deck in the same fashion that Delver decks are "Brainstorm" decks. Don't feel the need to mull for this card or protect it at all costs. It is the deck's glue, not its win condition, and the good stuff in the rest of the deck is still generally good stuff. Also, while like similar cards this spell's rate of return increases as the game goes on, do not feel that it needs to be strictly reserved for some narrow and specific game-ending play. There's a reason this deck isn't hard-control or hard-prison; Tainted Pact is what you need it to be.

Enlightened Tutor: While clearly not as versatile or powerful a tutor as Tainted Pact, do remember that you can often convert this into mana, removal, or discard as well given how the deck is built. It is not strictly for the big bomby lock-pieces.

Chrome Mox: Chrome Mox is not a card I am generally enthused to run in a control-to-midrange leaning deck, but it serves a wide variety of purpose here. The card provides color-fixing under a Blood Moon if one had to be deployed before basics were available; it provides acceleration for a few of the 3/4-CMC cards at the deck's high-end; it provides an outlet to utilize the odd Lock Piece that is naturally drawn and has little utility in the given matchup, and it can turn an Enlightened Tutor into a guarantee of top-decking a mana-source when needed. Arguably an artifact-land could have performed this last function as well, but our low dependency on artifact activation means that we can lean on (and tutor for) Null Rod effects from the board so no need to spread these uses onto a higher count of artifacts.

Taiga: A green source can be useful for Deathrite Shaman, and we had the room. In a deck with this many one-of's, there's always corner cases to talk about, like how it can be fetched off a Verdant Catacomb or Windsweapt Heath for R if Plateau and Badlands aren't in your library, but really it's just there for Deathrite (as well as getting max value from Ancient Grudge out of the board). It used to also be there for a 'fun-of' Assault/Battery that I was experimenting with to retain value against Chalice and Miracles, but that card's not in the deck anymore. It obviously never should have been in the deck in the first place, but it could turn Chrome Mox on for Deathrite as well and I did get to make the Elephant Token on coverage once. I didn't win that game and I could hear them laughing at me when I produced my already prepared and sleeved Elephant token, but I'm happy with that trade.

Mardu Charm: It is unfortunate that this card costs 3-mana instead of 2, but it still feels the best card for that slot as after the first turn it offers all the kinds of basic lifting the decks wants. It Duress' them, it Burns down a threat, and it makes multiple 1/1 tokens all at instant speed. Consider the one extra mana on this premium another part of the cost of relying on redundant effects. Also, it provides great 3-color fixing on Chrome Mox.

Zealous Persecution: This is in reality a kill-spell for Elves, True-Name, Pyromancer tokens, etc, but the fact that it can double as a board pump for your tokens gives it a use outside of those matchups and prevents it from being a dead-card. A first pick to board out in many matchups though, obviously. Also a particularly good follow up to a Humility.

Go for the Throat: A second piece of interaction that costs 1 mana too much, but you'll only spend it the once and it does answer most fatties.

Chained to the Rocks: A 3rd, sorcery speed swords. It can be fetched up with Enlightened Tutor in a pinch. Try to attach this to the Basic Mountain if possible. If not, plus your opponent is running Wasteland and you have to jam this without a Moon effect, attach it to your less desirable land.

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Some Notes on Pacting

Alright, here comes the strangest piece of play of the deck. Tainted pact often feels like as an endstep Demonic Tutor, but it does require some thoughtful play so it really needs to be discussed.

Burning the Future:

Let's say you have a Tainted Pact in hand against a RUG Delver Opponent who taps out on their turn. You realize that if you pact for Blood Moon on their endstep and put them to the test you can wrap up the game right away, but you haven't shredded their hand yet and there's a chance they're holding Force. You decided to jam it and make them have the force, so you Pact. It resolves. You start revealing your deck to get the game winning card.

For the first few you're probably not bothering to evaluate the risk/reward and payoff of the cards you're flipping past, because you know that Blood Moon will end the game. Then you hit a Lilianna of the Veil. That would be pretty good right now, but it's clearly no sure thing. Then you flip a Humility. Let's say you're pretty confident that the opponent could not come back from a resolved Humility. It's not Blood Moon - you want Blood Moon, but it's likely to get the job done. The issue is, however, that if both of these cards are a high premium for you and you take the Humility, it being Forced puts the game back in a state where you can grab the Blood Moon later. Pressing on and going for Blood Moon right now though is choosing to take a bigger bet on your opponent's lack of interaction; if you pass Humility and take Blood Moon and it gets countered, both of those cards are out of contention for the rest of the game.

Even if you're positive what you want, every time you flip a card off the top of the deck you are making a choice because that card is never coming back. You are burning future potential in order to get what you want now. Now maybe this is a series of easy conclusions when you're taking the first few cards off the top of your deck, but remember that if you're digging 12 cards down before you hit your target, you actually made a dozen choices in the game before you got there, and the game actually started to tweak with the statistics of risk and reward slightly on each choice. Did you notice when those risks and payoff potentials started to shift?

Using Tainted Pact optimally is not as easy as it might seem when the singleton-deck gimmick is revealed. That exists to make the card powerful, but that doesn't change the fact that if a card is asking you to make 20 decisions very quickly all in a row that those decisions are real and consequential, and it would not be hard to neglect to consider how many fetchable lands you are throwing out of your deck and how that changes your potential lines going forward. (I apologize for the double/triple negative in this sentence. I am not a talented writer.)

The Bust:

Speaking of that 'gimmick', barring any duplicates you choose to run in the sideboard, the deck is all singletons ... except for Tainted Pact. This means that when you play your first Tainted Pact of the game, if both of the other copies of Tainted Pact have not moved zones and are still in your library, there is a landmine when you Pact - hitting Pact; Pact. If you do, you get nothing. This means that there are times when you're digging for an answer, a threat, whatever it may be and you hit the first pact, a bomb has just been set. You could, of course, just take the Tainted Pact itself if mana and/or time is no object, but let's assume that both are real resources you cannot afford to waste. Every subsequent card you flip you will now have to evaluate with that potential bust in mind. Technically, it's probably something you should have been evaluating before you hit the first pact just statistically, but now the initial safety-net has been removed.

This isn't intended to make you second guess yourself; even in the exact scenario where you have one Pact in hand, both of the others are in the deck, you can't afford to chain Pacts and there's only 1 exact card that you are willing to take in the deck, there's still a 67% chance you would hit it before the 2nd pact. This is a landmine that rarely if ever goes off and you generally have the ability to see it coming and play around the threat of it, but it does exist and if you want to play the Pact optimally it is something that has to be respected.

The point remains, every choice made after every flip matters. Even if they seem like a handful of easy decisions, they are real and you may have to make a large number of them sequentially in a very short time-span. Playing Pact correctly is more than just knowing what you want to dig for. Even after timing it well on the board, the mini-game it asks of you is a high-reward often skill-testing endeavor and should probably not be done on 'auto-pilot'.

Overclocking:

There is one final element to give some consideration to on every flip. Sometimes you are confident in what you are digging for and what you are digging past with respect to Burning and Busting; it could be one of those last pieces of discard, or that 1 specific card that will finally lock out the game, but fate has playfully put that card or cards somewhere in the very, very bottom section of your deck.

Of course you don't know this when you start. When you began pacting, you knew the card would win you the game, but now you've been digging farther and farther and now there are 12 cards left in the deck. Now there are 11. At what point do you bail? How does what the card you flip effect whether or not it is in your best interest to bail even if it's not what you are digging for? How many turns would it take you to win with this card instead? What are the possible cards you might end up with if you dig 1 card further, and how many turns would it take you to win with each of those cards? Could your opponent Ancestral Visions you out of 3 turns on that clock?

Pacting well can very suddenly require a lot of statistical analysis and you probably don't have time to go back, double check what is still left in the deck and do some back of the handkerchief math to figure out what your safest path is.

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That's all for now; hope this has been an entertaining read. I will post again if I think of any ways to improve this strategy. Perhaps a Moat out of the board? Input is appreciated.

[Jakobian1010]

Have you considered running 1 (or more) eternal scourge? You can dig for it while you're digging for something else with tainted pact, and it's a recur-able creature. If you ran multiples you could still dig until you hit two, then both are in exile and you could cast both of them still. It makes tainted pact less awesome, but still seems like a potential line of play. Maybe 1 in the main 1 in the board for times that two seems like a good idea? Could also mention misthollow griffin and/or torrent elemental, but eternal scourge requires the least changes to the deck.

Also, would Koth of the Hammer be a potential win-con?

[Rationalist]

Have you considered running 1 (or more) eternal scourge? You can dig for it while you're digging for something else with tainted pact, and it's a recur-able creature. If you ran multiples you could still dig until you hit two, then both are in exile and you could cast both of them still. It makes tainted pact less awesome, but still seems like a potential line of play. Maybe 1 in the main 1 in the board for times that two seems like a good idea? Could also mention misthollow griffin and/or torrent elemental, but eternal scourge requires the least changes to the deck.

I have thought about exile-zone shenanigans, but I honestly don't think a 3/3 for 3 really advances my game plan. It's providing me questionable value, it's expensive when I already want to be leaner, it can't attack through my own Ensnaring Bridge and it's just a 1/1 under Humility.

It's cute, but at this point in time I just don't see it.

[bruizar]

First off, compliments for the deck. It looks like a lot of fun to play. Have you considered cards like Cavern of Soul, Overmaster or Vexing Shusher to ensure you resolve the game winning card after you've exiled your liliana and humility to reach it? I can understand if you think these cards don't do enough to warrant a slot, on the other hand it also helps you resolve the one spell you need to win the game.

[mistercakes]

for those 3 sb slots i like:

extirpate/surgical
ethersworn canonist
engineered plague (for empty the warrens, dnt, and elves matchups)

[jafar]

Interesting idea. Imho you lack some mass removal (for corner case even if you run creatures), i
I'd suggest:
1 blessed alliance
1 damnation &/or Wog
1 toxic deluge
1 gerrard's verdict (more hymn)
1 night's whisper (some real CA?)

My 2 cents

Bye

[frafen]

Cool, we had the same idea to build around Tainted Pact but we went for different colors. I'm playing an UBx list and made a thread a while ago. Tainted Pact is an amazing card and incredibly complicate to play right... but that's why it's so fun to cast.

I play with 4 pacts and it has never been a problem. Sometimes you'll fizzle but if you play carefully it's not going to be a problem.

I like delve creatures -Angler, Tombstalker, Tasigur- but maybe in your deck are less good since you don't have cantrips.

[mgrinshpon]

Main deck has 59 cards as listed.

Some cards you may want to consider:
- Removal
-- Engineered Plague
-- Blessed Alliance
-- Kozilek's Return (colorless removal that really shines against D&T but maybe maindeckable elsewhere)
-- Virtue's Ruin
-- Perish
-- Damnation
-- Toxic Deluge
-- Engineered Explosives
-- Chainer's Edict
-- Crackling Doom
-- Murderous Cut
- Card Advantage
-- Night's Whisper
- Graveyard Hate
-- Surgical Extraction
-- Extirpate
-- Nihil Spellbomb
- Wincons
-- Tombstalker/Gurmag Angler
-- Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

[Kanti]

For CA, why not x1 Confidant and x1 Phyrexian Arena? The Confidant is always a solid draw, even late-game when you would prefer a bomb, but he will at-least draw you into the bomb. The Phyrexian Arena seems amazing, as it's only 1-life per card, is annoying to remove being an enchantment, and you will have a virtual 2-copies with the Enlightened Tutor you are already playing.

I think you can do more with the lands, too. Bojuka Bog seems very nice, and maybe a singleton Wasteland you can Pact for if you see the chance to color-screw your opponent, or are guarding vs Dark Depths. You already have x1 Needle, x1 Revoker vs them, so it would just be upping your hate to a little more.

edit: the tokens are cool (YP+Bitterblossom+Souls) but you are only running x1 Cabal Therapy. How much better are these cards than like a Tombstalker? Also, have you considered running x1 Gitaxian Probe just because?