Been messing around with this online. There's two lines of attack: (1) Hollow One / Arclight Plan beat down plan; (2) Waste Not / Caress discard plan; they both feed into each other to some degree. This deck has some busted draws (e.g. Land, Petal, Ritual, Waste Not, Thoughtseize, Burning Inquiry, recur a discarded Phoenix and depending on what they discard this can chain into way more stuff) but also a lot of do nothing draws. When it works its really fun. Here's the list:
Creatures
4 Arclight Phoenix
4 Hollow One
2 Gurmag Angler
Discard / Filtering
4 Burning Inquiry
4 Faithless Looting
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
1 Raven's Crime
4 Hymn to Tourach
2 Dark Deal
Payoff Enchantments
2 Liliana's Caress
4 Waste Not
Fast Mana
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
Lands
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Badlands
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
1 Dakmor Salvage
Sideboard
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Abrade
2 Ensaring Bridge
2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Diabolic Edict
2 Pyroblast
2 Pithing Needle
I love Waste Not, it's definitely a pet card. Hollow One adds a lot of great synergy for sure. Here are a couple suggestions that I think could give some different direction to the deck:
-Bloodghast + Cabal Therapy
Repeated discard, one of them free, can really start stacking up Waste Not triggers. Fetchlands are pure gas with Bloodghast/Therapy. Having more threats to pressure your opponent after destroying their hand is pretty important, especially if you don't find a Waste Not early. Binning Bloodghasts with Inquiry/Looting is also awesome, a way to make those cards even better than they already are. There will be a non-zero amount of times you won't have Phoenix's to discard to Looting so having extra targets seems very good. Which brings me to my next suggestion...
-Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows (+Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth)
Small threats will still get through your discard so having a way to repeatedly remove them seems very good. PFire is fine discarded with Burning Inquiry/Faithless Looting as well if you already have Grove. Urborg helps settle mana.
I think the weaker parts are Liliana's Caress (the old megrim problem) and too low of a land count. I know you're leaning on Lotus Petal/Dark Ritual, but I think Dark Ritual would only be good if you are planning on running Buried Alive (to combo with Phoenix.) I think those slots would be much better placed as lands, at least to get up to 18 or so. Raven's Crime is a subtle powerhouse; you definitely want enough lands to enable using it after your mana is settled. I think 18 is a good starting point, especially considering you won't have access to Dakmor Salvage every game.
If I were to try this I would make these changes:
-4 Dark Ritual
-2 Liliana's Caress
-2 Dark Deal
-3 Inquisition of Kozilek
-2 Gurmag Angler
+3 Bloodghast
+3 Cabal Therapy
+3 Punishing Fire
+4 Lands (change mix, at least 3 of them Grove of the Burnwillows and 1-2 of them Urborg)
Very cool idea! Burning Inquiry isn't just for Hollow One anymore!
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
It seems like there's a big risk of running out of gas with a concept like this. I wonder whether it makes sense to include something like Bomat Courier, Reforge The Soul, Past in Flames, Ill-Gotten Gains or even Electrodominance + Restore Balance/Wheel of Fate silliness. There's also the option for more 'value discard' like Smallpox, Chain of Smog or Tasigur's Cruelty to supplement the Hymns.
If you're going to be running more than a couple of turns, Chrome Mox is probably better than Dark Ritual.
Wrap it in [cards] tags. (You can see an example if you quote a post with card links.) Mindless Automaton
@ rufus: My hero!
Anyways, Dream Salvage is a must consider for all Waste Not decks.
Great suggestions guys I will have to test that! P-Fire combo is nothing I considered but it sounds like it could be really good. The problem with every Waste Not deck I've tried was what does the deck do if you don't draw / can't resolve the card. I think finally Hollow One and Phoenix is a natural secondary plan (really ends up being the first plan most of the time).
I was running 2 Dream Salvage at some point. That card is definitely gas! The list is very loose and changing right now so I might of cut them around the time I started testing Ritual and Petal since before then the deck was too slow. With them its faster but it runs out of steam too much. Need to find a middle ground.
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