Escape Brain Freeze

[Seymour_Asses]

Damn I think that PO/Monolith/Meditate/etc stuff is exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

[shojeel]

Yeah I think 4 SR is too many anyway. It's more of a backup than a main engine. 2-3 should be enough.

Cunning Wish seems no slower than Meditate. Same mana cost, but Meditate costs a full turn!! Do you ever cast it before the combo turn? Once you're going off, you can Wish for Meditate if you need the draw.

-2 Meditate (leave 1 tutorable with Merchant Scroll)
-1 SR
+3 Cunning Wish

Doing that, Wish is replacing other slow 3 cmc cards so you shouldn't lose explosiveness, and you gain some powerful lines wishing for PO.

Wishboard:
1 PO
1 Meditate
1 Echoing Truth
1 Wear // Tear
etc etc

Edit: How consistently can you find Underworld Breach without any tutors? I found even running 4 tutors + 8 cantrips I was just barely seeing the card often enough. You're in white so you could play Enlightened Tutor. It's -1 card but it finds Breach, LED, Defense Grid, Hope, Astrolabe..

I am not sold on Cunning Wish yet. I would rather have almost everything we need in the main. I can see running more merchant scrolls, a couple of tutorable answers and a couple of heavy draw spells (1/1 spilt OG Meditate and PO). I like the idea of ET as a way to find LED/Breach or DG/HoG.

As for finding the UB, try to remember that this plays as a self mill deck, so you almost always want to BF yourself to get UB, LED and SR into the yard. SR is busted in that way.

[FTW]

Between your list and other previous lists, if we go with the Astrolabe snow manabase to beat Wasteland (which makes Mox Opal worth running, and also Defense Grid), it looks like we have a "core" shell of the following cards:


//Main Combo: 12
4 Underworld Breach
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Brain Freeze

//Lands: 13
8 fetches
5 snow basics and duals

//Mana Rocks: 12
4 Arcum's Astrolabe
4 Lotus Petal
4 Mox Opal

//Cantrips: 8
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

//Protection:
3 Defense Grid


That's 48 cards. Other than maybe some Ponders, those slots look mandatory for the deck to function.

That leaves 12 open slots. At least 3-4 should be additional protection. The others probably card draw, tutors, alternate win conditions, or more lands.

So far the deck is almost monoblue, splashing red for Breach, with easy support for other splash colors. Is white necessarily the best splash?


WHITE
Sevinne's Reclamation - Recursion for dead pieces, very powerful lategame

Enlightened Tutor - Finds Breach, LED, Defense Grid, Astrolabe, or other things

Silence - protection, but slows down the combo turn



BLACK
Thoughtseize - protection that can be cast before the combo turn without slowing you down

Wishclaw Talisman - An artifact for Metalcraft. Tutors anything, but slow.

Infernal Tutor - Tutors anything with LED or fast mana to empty the hand

Entomb - synergizes with Sevinne's Reclamation to tutor Breach into play, can put Sevinne in the yard to flashback,
or put LED or Freeze in the yard to go off with Breach out



GREEN
Veil of Summer - protection but slows down the combo turn and requires finding off-color mana just to protect. Doesn't stop as much as Silence.

Abrupt Decay - need to splash both G and B, but clean answer to a lot of problem cards

Noxious Revival - recover dead pieces for 0 mana, counters Surgical Extraction, Wishable



RED
Burning Wish - finds SB answers or alternate win conditions when mill does not kill

Gamble - tutors anything, but backfires.



Staying in BLUE
Cunning Wish - finds instant SB answers or alternate engine

Preordain - more cantripping

Merchant Scroll - finds Cunning Wish, Brain Freeze or card draw but cannot find Breach or LED

Paradoxical Outcome - another card draw and storm engine, but expensive, probably better in a Wishboard than main

Meditate - draws a lot of cards, but skips your turn

Tome Scour - mills yourself to dig deep and fuel escape and functions as Brain Freeze # 5-7 to go off without it

Intuition - tutors any piece, but costs 3 mana and can walk into Surgical Extraction. Has some synergy with Sevinne's Reclamation

Hope of Ghirapur - combo protection and supports Metalcraft, but also dies to removal game 1

Pact of Negation - protection during the combo turn for 0 mana. Could be found with Cunning Wish, Merchant Scroll, Entomb, or regular tutors

Emry, Lurker of the Loch - mills 4 for U, then can reuse LEDs and Petals


I'm wondering if the black splash for Thoughtseize and real tutors is worth it. Or in white we could run Enlightened too.

Tutors are strong. Breach is the best card in the deck and will be countered/killed as much as the opponent can, so I think it helps to have tutors to find Breach directly. Tutors also find SB answers, protection, and all sorts of things.

[FTW]

As for finding the UB, try to remember that this plays as a self mill deck, so you almost always want to BF yourself to get UB, LED and SR into the yard. SR is busted in that way.

I usually self-mill a bit into LED and other stuff, but try to find UB directly. Then it just costs 1R to go off.

I can see why your build plays that way because you don't have other ways to find UB. But have you tried playing tutors for UB directly and compared? Would that be faster than tutoring for Brain Freeze, generating enough storm to dig into all 3 pieces, then paying 5 mana to flashback SR? I'll have to test your build and see how it goes.

[Lemon]

I took this list to the monthly and got to test it against a few people (4c Miracles and a RUG Ravager aggro deck). It performed extremely well. Defense Grid was a house, and I think it would probably be wrong to run less than three. It should be noted however that they don't play well with Pulverize. Though I don't know how I'd go about fixing this or if we need bother.

19 Mana Sources
10 Blue Fetch
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Island Island
3 Lotus Petal

9 Protection
3 Veil of Summer
3 Defense Grid
3 Spell Pierce

6 Utility
3 Burning Wish
3 Lightning Bolt

12 Combo
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Underworld Breach
4 Brain Freeze

14 Dig
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
2 Intuition

6 Wishboard
1 Grapeshot
1 Void Snare
1 Tome Scour
1 Pulverize
1 Echo of Eons
1 Reverent Silence

9 Sideboard
1 Burning Wish
1 Echoing Truth
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Flusterstorm
3 Silent Gravestone
1 Pithing Needle


There are a few changes I'd like to make to it, but I think this is probably where I want to take the deck. I love shojeel's idea of using Sevinne's Reclamation, and am probably going to move this RUG list over to Jeskai to use it. Interestingly, though probably not of use to us, is that escaping SR triggers the copying. Replace the Veil of Summer's with Silence, and maybe Reverent Silence with Fragmentize. This also opens us up to running Hall of Heliod's Generosity to return our milled Breaches. With the new list looking Something like this:

19 Mana Sources
8 Blue Fetch
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra
1 Island Island
2 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
3 Lotus Petal

9 Protection
3 Silence
3 Defense Grid
3 Spell Pierce

6 Utility
3 Burning Wish
3 Lightning Bolt

12 Combo
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Underworld Breach
4 Brain Freeze

14 Dig
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
2 Intuition

6 Wishboard
1 Grapeshot
1 Void Snare
1 Tome Scour
1 Pulverize
1 Echo of Eons
1 Fragmentize
1 Sevinne's Reclamation

9 Sideboard
1 Burning Wish
1 Echoing Truth
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Flusterstorm
3 Silent Gravestone
1 Defense Grid

[shojeel]

I took this list to the monthly and got to test it against a few people (4c Miracles and a RUG Ravager aggro deck). It performed extremely well. Defense Grid was a house, and I think it would probably be wrong to run less than three. It should be noted however that they don't play well with Pulverize. Though I don't know how I'd go about fixing this or if we need bother.

19 Mana Sources
10 Blue Fetch
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Island Island
3 Lotus Petal

9 Protection
3 Veil of Summer
3 Defense Grid
3 Spell Pierce

6 Utility
3 Burning Wish
3 Lightning Bolt

12 Combo
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Underworld Breach
4 Brain Freeze

14 Dig
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
2 Intuition

6 Wishboard
1 Grapeshot
1 Void Snare
1 Tome Scour
1 Pulverize
1 Echo of Eons
1 Reverent Silence

9 Sideboard
1 Burning Wish
1 Echoing Truth
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Flusterstorm
3 Silent Gravestone
1 Pithing Needle


There are a few changes I'd like to make to it, but I think this is probably where I want to take the deck. I love shojeel's idea of using Sevinne's Reclamation, and am probably going to move this RUG list over to Jeskai to use it. Interestingly, though probably not of use to us, is that escaping SR triggers the copying. Replace the Veil of Summer's with Silence, and maybe Reverent Silence with Fragmentize. This also opens us up to running Hall of Heliod's Generosity to return our milled Breaches. With the new list looking Something like this:

19 Mana Sources
8 Blue Fetch
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra
1 Island Island
2 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
3 Lotus Petal

9 Protection
3 Silence
3 Defense Grid
3 Spell Pierce

6 Utility
3 Burning Wish
3 Lightning Bolt

12 Combo
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Underworld Breach
4 Brain Freeze

14 Dig
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
2 Intuition

6 Wishboard
1 Grapeshot
1 Void Snare
1 Tome Scour
1 Pulverize
1 Echo of Eons
1 Fragmentize
1 Sevinne's Reclamation

9 Sideboard
1 Burning Wish
1 Echoing Truth
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Flusterstorm
3 Silent Gravestone
1 Defense Grid

This looks great! I should have remembered that I could play Preordain. I think I was trying to get too cute with the artifact package. However, I would make some changes to your list, especially since you mentioned wanting to play Sevinne's Reclamation. Maybe something like this:


16 Mana Sources
8 Blue Fetch
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra
3 Snow-covered Island Island

9 Protection
3 Silence
3 Defense Grid
3 Spell Pierce

8 Utility
3 Burning Wish
3 Sevinne's Reclamation
2 Lightning Bolt

12 Combo
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Underworld Breach
4 Brain Freeze

15 Dig
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Preordain
4 Arcum's Astrolabe

I really like the direction this is taking. It has so many lines of play!

[shojeel]

@Lemon

Also, for your wishboard you should run a single [card]Infernal Tutor[/card]. There are plenty of times when you should be able to get it with B-Wish, crack LED and find UB or whatever you need. Maybe the board should be something like:

6 Wishables:

Infernal Tutor
Sevinne's Reclamation
Grapeshot
Tome Scour
Void Snare
Shattering Spree


9 Other SB Cards:

3 Silent Gravestones
2 Echoing Truth
1 Flusterstorm
1 Defense Grid
2 Clash/Red Elemental Blast/Silence

Other cards to consider are:
Massacre
Tendril's of Agony

[shojeel]

Wow is this deck a ton of fun to play!


Instants (16)
4 Brain Freeze
4 Brainstorm
2 Lightning Bolt
3 Silence
3 Spell Pierce
Lands (16)
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Snow-Covered Island
2 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
Sorceries (13)
3 Burning Wish
4 Ponder
3 Preordain
3 Sevinne's Reclamation
Artifacts (11)
4 Arcum's Astrolabe
3 Defense Grid
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
Enchantments (4)
4 The Flame of Keld
Sideboard (15)
1 Burning Wish
1 Defense Grid
3 Echoing Truth
1 Flusterstorm
1 Grapeshot
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
1 Shattering Spree
3 Silent Gravestone
1 Tome Scour

[FTW]

I took this list to the monthly and got to test it against a few people (4c Miracles and a RUG Ravager aggro deck). It performed extremely well. Defense Grid was a house, and I think it would probably be wrong to run less than three. It should be noted however that they don't play well with Pulverize. Though I don't know how I'd go about fixing this or if we need bother.

There are a few changes I'd like to make to it, but I think this is probably where I want to take the deck. I love shojeel's idea of using Sevinne's Reclamation, and am probably going to move this RUG list over to Jeskai to use it. Interestingly, though probably not of use to us, is that escaping SR triggers the copying. Replace the Veil of Summer's with Silence, and maybe Reverent Silence with Fragmentize. This also opens us up to running Hall of Heliod's Generosity to return our milled Breaches. With the new list looking Something like this:

19 Mana Sources
8 Blue Fetch
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra
1 Island Island
2 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
3 Lotus Petal

9 Protection
3 Silence
3 Defense Grid
3 Spell Pierce

6 Utility
3 Burning Wish
3 Lightning Bolt

12 Combo
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Underworld Breach
4 Brain Freeze

14 Dig
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
2 Intuition

6 Wishboard
1 Grapeshot
1 Void Snare
1 Tome Scour
1 Pulverize
1 Echo of Eons
1 Fragmentize
1 Sevinne's Reclamation

9 Sideboard
1 Burning Wish
1 Echoing Truth
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Flusterstorm
3 Silent Gravestone
1 Defense Grid

I like where you're taking the deck.

I really like Sevinne's Reclamation in the Wishboard. I kept wanting to Burning Wish into a way to get Breach or LED, and that does it.

I tried playng around with shojeel's list and some variations of it (e.g. adding Enlightened Tutor and Emry, or splashing black for Entomb or Wishclaw Talisman), but I didn't like the artifact package. Astrolabe slows down the deck. I like your idea of just running more land and cantrips, that should be enough against Wasteland.

[HdH_Cthulhu]

Only problem with Sevinne's Reclamation is that you are even more GY dependant. So pretty good game 1. Idk board it out game 2?

[AngryBacon]

Only problem with Sevinne's Reclamation is that you are even more GY dependant. So pretty good game 1. Idk board it out game 2?

One other problem is that you don't really want it with Silent Gravestone together. I've tried it in a Painter list with multiple copies of LEDs and it was great. Here it's even better when it works since you can escape for 2W only and still retrieve 2 permanents. Though i fail to see how it is better than more cantrip or tutors in this deck. I'd consider it if the kill were permanent-based eg. 1 Grindstone 1 Painter's Servant in the 60 Which is not that relevant since it has no direct advantages over the Brain Freeze kill. In white though, a secondary kill could be 2 copies of Monastery Mentor with 1 Anger.

But all those options are strictly worse than having 1 or 2 copies of Burning Wish looks like. Reclamation could help later in the game as mentioned but I'm not sure it warrants a white splash. I'll try some goldfish games with a 5c list and rainbow lands see how it feels.

Quick edit: don't forget that Intuition targets and eats the same hate as Brain Freeze.

[AngryBacon]

Another route could be to go Veteran Explorer and Stitcher's Supplier with Cabal Therapy and Culling the Weak.

Also in the creature theme, Hedron Crab is a thing.

[FTW]

Also in the creature theme, Hedron Crab is a thing.

Emry, Lurker of the Loch is a creature. With 2 you can Escape chain them like Memory Sluices (Legend rule), so it works as a backup Brain Freeze. It also has "T: reuse LED".

I messed around with this shell. Different direction, higher variance, but crazy explosive power.


//Artifacts: 19
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Mox Opal
4 Defense Grid
3 Grim Monolith

//Enchantments: 4
4 Underworld Breach

//Planeswalkers: 3
3 Narset, Parter of Veils

//Creatures: 4
4 Emry, Lurker of the Loch

//Spells: 12
3 Brain Freeze
3 Burning Wish
3 Paradoxical Outcome
3 Echo of Eons

//Lands: 18
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Polluted Delta
2 Volcanic Island
3 Snow-Covered Island

//Sideboard: 15
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Thought-Knot Seer
1 Grapeshot
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
1 Echo of Eons

//Maybes:
x Arcum's Astrolabe
x Mishra's Bauble
x Monastery Mentor
x Intuition
x Urza in the SB
x Auriok Salvagers


Transformational SB seemed like a good idea for this build. Also LOL @ Storm deck boarding in Chalice.

It's high variance. It can brick on draws. But I've also cast Paradoxical Outcome 3 times on turn 2. Or turn 1 or Echo 1-2 times into Breach combo or Narset+Echo.


Some synergies:
Underworld Breach + LED + Brain Freeze - main combo

Paradoxical Outcome (from hand or escaped) returns Underworld Breach to your hand if you can't fully go off

Narset, Parter of Veils + Echo of Eons + LED - "win" the game

Breach + LED + Echo - can escape LED and float more mana for the new hand

Reusing Emry's mill with Underworld Breach escaping or Paradoxical Outcome

Paradoxical Outcome + Narset, Parter of Veils - reset to Narset to get more cards

[Lemon]

Quick edit: don't forget that Intuition targets and eats the same hate as Brain Freeze.

What do you mean by this? Intuition lets you get 3 copies of the same card, so you're guaranteed to get at least 1 copy into your hand, or you can mix and match if there isn't graveyard hate to get multiple pieces.

[AngryBacon]

What do you mean by this? Intuition lets you get 3 copies of the same card, so you're guaranteed to get at least 1 copy into your hand, or you can mix and match if there isn't graveyard hate to get multiple pieces.

Read Intuition's oracle again ;-) You need a target to resolve it.

[Lemon]

Read Intuition's oracle again ;-) You need a target to resolve it.

Interesting, so you can't resolve it if they have Leyline of Sanctity out.

[AngryBacon]

Interesting, so you can't resolve it if they have Leyline of Sanctity out.

Exactly, can't play it. Veil of Summer makes it fizzle as well. Ashiok is a middle finger too.

[FTW]

Exactly, can't play it. Veil of Summer makes it fizzle as well. Ashiok is a middle finger too.

Huh, even Intuition has a drawback. What would you play instead?

[FTW]

As far as competitive lists go, I like the track we've been on so far.

The Emry list I posted above is more of a glass cannon but can do hilarious things.

A few goldfishes...

T1 Land, Opal, LED, LED. Burning Wish for Echo
T2 Tomb, Narset. Echo floating UURR, draw 7 & opponent loses hand. Petal. Narset -2: LED. Paradoxical Outcome returning Narset, Opal, LED & Petal: Draw 4. Petal, LEDx2, Opalx2. Underworld Breach. Emry, mill 4. Crack LEDs, discard 6: RRRRRR. Escape Burning Wish. Grapeshot. Escape Grapeshot.

Mull to 6
T1 fetch Volcanic. LED, LED, Opal. Breach. Crack 1 LED: Echo. Draw 7. LED. Crack 1, discard 6: UUU. Escape Emry, mill 4. Crack other: RRR. Escape Wish for Grapeshot. Grapeshot. Escape Grapeshot.

T1 fetch Volcanic. Petal. Monolith
T2. Monolith. Petal. Underworld Breach. Brain Freeze self for 12 into LED. -> loop LED & Brain Freeze -> win


T1 fetch Volcanic
T2 Tomb, Monolith, Opal, Emry, mill 4
T3 Island. Narset. -2: find Outcome. Tap Emry: Petal. Paradoxical Outcome, returning Monolith, Opal, Petal, Emry, Narset: Draw 5. LED, Petal x3, Opal. Narset (sac 2 petals). -2: find Burning Wish. Burning Wish (Storm 10) for Echo of Eons. Crack LED: UUU. Echo. Opponent loses hand, draw 7. Petal, Opal, Brain Freeze mill opponent 42. Punt and pass.
T4 Narset -2: find Breach. City. Emry mill 4. Underworld Breach. escape Brain Freeze -> loop -> kill

Turn 3 "fizzled" but opponent got Mind Twisted and lost most of their deck while you have a full grip to win.


T1 fetch Volcanic
T2 Island. Breach. LED, discard 4: UUU. Escape Brain Freeze -> Loop -> win


Mull to 5
T1 City. Monolith. LED: UUU. Echo. Draw 7.
T2 Float 5. Island (City dies). Outcome, returning 2 Petals+Monolith: Draw 3. 3x Petal, Monolith. Narset (sac 2 petals). -2 Narset: another Grim Monolith. Pass
T3 Tomb. Opal. -2 Narset: LED. Underworld Breach. Escape Outcome, returning 2 Monoliths, Petal, LED, Opal, Narset, Breach: Draw 7. Opal, Petal, Monolith, Monolith, LED, Breach. Crack LED, discard 11: RRR. escape LED: RRR. escape Burning Wish. Grapeshot. escape Grapeshot.


T1 fetch Volcanic. LED, LED, Emry mill 4.
T2 Island. Monolith. Monolith. Tap Emry: Petal. Sac petal. Outcome, returning 2 Monolith, LED, Emry: draw 4 (crack other LED for UUU). LED, Monolith, Monolith. Narset. -2: find Breach. Defense Grid.
T3 Breach + LED + 2x Emry loop -> Brain Freeze -> Wish -> Grapeshots


The RUG or Jeskai lists we have above with cantrips seem like a better competitive direction to win real games, but I wanted to share this brew too and the synergies of the cards.

[Cire]

Despite suggesting Astrolab on the second post of this thread - not the largest fan of it. Not that it isn't a good card, but it represents this deck slowing down to turn 3/4 IMO. The addition of cards like reclamation, intuition, meditate also represent that this deck is going for grind rather than explosive starts. If you're tutoring EOT opponents turn 3 - IDK, I feel that in real games that you would have had to face so much disruption already. Speed is another form of protection that this deck has.

---

On another note, I was working on the following list for fun. Despite my eventual conclusion posting it in case someone wants to work of this list in case they see potential in it.

The idea of this list revolved around the card scheming symmetry. It can search up any card in your deck BUT it gets your opponent their preferred disruption. As such I built around trying to get around that symmetry. The three solutions to me are: Defense Grid (your opponent needs to search up sorcery speed disruption or have find Artifact hate and Instant speed disruption), Free Draw (this turns the "combo" into a 4 card three mana combo), and Tome Scour/Sluice (you mill your opponent's answer). Given that Tome Scour and Sluice can essentially be part of the Combo itself they work very well with Symmetry although the deck does play oddly on turn 2 (Search plus mill to set up a turn 3 win).

The list I tested was:

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Underworld Breach
3 Tome Scour
3 Brainfreeze
1 Burning Wish

4 Enlightened Tutor
3 Gamble
3 Scheming Symmetry

4 Thoughtseize
4 Pact of Negation
2 Defense Grid

4 Lotus Petal
4 Mox Opal
4 Chromatic Sphere

13 Lands

To explain the choice of Chromatic Sphere - it is "free draw" if you cast in the turn before and it provides artifact count for Opal and color fixing. I used it instead of Astrolab because astrolab doesn't really "work" with symmetry, which is what this version was built around. You'll notice no Brainstorm - that's because I had to cut it for the tutors. It is unfortunate since Brainstorm also really reduces variance. Additionally the low land count didn't really support the fetches necessary for Brainstorm.

Some goldfishing testing results out of 30 games:

Goldfishes:
T1: 1
T2 unprotected: 8
T2 w discard: 3
T3 w discard: 4
T2 w Pact: 3
T3 w Pact: 3
T3 w Grid: 4
T4 with protection: 3
T4 unprotected: 1
#times symmetry was in hand without Mill/Draw/Grid: 2 (one of those games led to a turn 4 unprotected result)
How many times did I enlightened tutor for Grid: 1

Conclusion: Do not think Scheming Symmetry is worth it. The end result of 30 goldfishing games is largely similar to other lists previously posted. Playing with symmetry often felt like playing a 2 card combo (Symmetry plus draw/mill/grid) to get a three card combo. . . I feel the only reason it worked out as well as it did was that Underworld Breach is powerful enough, and the underling combo is powerful enough to enable the above results almost regardless of shell . . .