[Deck] Spanish Inquisition (B/x Storm Combo)

[emidln]

This is a thread for SI and derivatives. I'm going to post several lists, but please note that I'm only going to talk about specific versions in the writeup. I consider these other versions obsolete and am including them for historical interests.

This deck was conceptualized by Robert Vroman and others on Ogre's Message Boards in the late Winter/early Spring of 2006. I remember playing against an early version with Flame Vault Stasis Stax on the side of a Vintage tourney at some Anime Convention that March/April. One of the people on those boards was a kid by the name of Evenpence, who used this list to split first at a tourney in Blue Bell, PA.

Warning: Obsolete Decklist Follows

//"The Spanish Inquisition" by Colby Evenpence (May 2006)
// Initial Mana Sources
4 Land Grant
2 Bayou
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox

// Tall Men
4 Ornithopter
4 Phyrexian Walker
4 Shield Sphere

// Ritual Effects
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Culling the Weak
4 Lion's Eye Diamond

// Business
4 Cruel Bargain
4 Infernal Contract
4 Diabolic Intent
2 Ill-Gotten Gains
4 Tendrils of Agony

//Sideboard
4 Naturalize
4 Massacre
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Defense Grid

Since this list, a few things have changed. Infernal Tutor allowed 4 creature slots to be freed. I added Goblin Charbelcher as a 1-of alternate win condition against Meddling Mage and storm-hate. We tried several splash colors. To my knowledge, only a few people play this deck, the most notable being B.C. (another Ogre boards guy) who has done a lot of testing with his own variants. I'll present the most interesting of these to you here:

SI Variant Name: Sir Speedy
Major Variation (from): Multiple Maindeck ETW (standard build)
Colors: B/R/u

// Maindeck
// Initial Mana Sources:
2 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Badlands
1 Underground Sea
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox

// Ritual Effects:
4 Dark Ritual
4 Culling the Weak
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Cabal Ritual

// Tall Men:
4 Phyrexian Walker
4 Shield Sphere

// Business:
4 Cruel Bargain
4 Infernal Contract
4 Infernal Tutor
2 Ill-Gotten Gains
4 Empty the Warrens
3 Tendrils of Agony

// Sideboard:
3 Rebuild
1 Hurkyl's Recall
4 Tomb of Urami
3 Echoing Truth
4 Cabal Therapy

SI Variant Name: SITES
Major Variation (from): Simian Spirit Guide (Sir Speedy)
Colors: B/R/u

//Maindeck
//Initial Mana Sources:
2 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Badlands
1 Underground Sea
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox

//Ritual Effects:
4 Dark Ritual
4 Culling the Weak
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Cabal Ritual
3 Simian Spirit Guide

//Tall Men:
4 Phyrexian Walker
4 Shield Sphere

//Business:
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Cruel Bargain
4 Infernal Contract
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Empty the Warrens

//Sideboard:
2 Tendrils of Agony
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Chain of Vapor
2 Tomb of Urami
4 Dark Confidant

SI Variant Name: QSI
Major Variation: Anti-Control Strategy (everything)
Colors: B/U/r

//Maindeck
//Lands:
2 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Underground Sea
1 Swamp

//Additional Mana Sources:
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox

//Ritual Effects:
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Culling the Weak

//Tall Men:
4 Phyrexian Walker
4 Shield Sphere

//Busted Draw:
4 Brainstorm
4 Cruel Bargain
4 Infernal Contract
3 Meditate

//Other Business:
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Tendrils of Agony

//Sideboard:
2 Badlands
4 Empty the Warrens
4 Dark Confidant
4 Echoing Truth
1 Rebuild

Card Choices:

SI is made up of a few different classes of cards. You have Initial Mana Sources, Ritual Effects, Tall Men, and Business. I'll talk about each separately.

Initial Mana Sources:

Lotus Petal / Chrome Mox -These are required. They can help start your combo, provide storm, and enable to to keep playing off-black spells throughout your combo turn.

Land Grant / Fetchlands - These are also required, but which you play is dictated by the other cards you want to run.

Land Grant's largest drawback is that it can be countered. Generally, you will want to run no more than 3 Land in a Land Grant build in order to support Goblin Charbelcher as an alternate win condition. On the bright side, Land Grant can be cast for storm, deckthining (very minute, but drawing a land off a draw4 in these builds is very bad), and imprinted on Chrome Mox to make (essentially) colorless mana. Generally, Land Grant is eschewed in builds that play colors outside of green as supporting non-Bayou lands with Land Grant is extremely difficult in a deck that requires lands to produce black.

Fetchlands provide non-counterable (generally, I've never had a fetchland stifled while playing SI) ways of fetching out non-green black-producing lands. Most of the time, the lifeloss will be insignificant due the rounding nature of the draw4s. Fetchlands allow you to run as few or as many lands as you choose. Lately, I've been running 7-9 lands (4-5 fetches) for more consistency. Generally, only black-fetchlands are used. Significantly, fetchlands are much harder to destroy than regular lands and can be played on the table and then saved until needed.

Swamp/Bayou/Badlands/Underground Sea/Scrubland - which of these lands and how many you play largely depends on what other cards you're using. Obviously, don't include duals you don't need to, and play with basic swamp if your manabase will allow it.

Ritual Effects

Dark Ritual - Three black mana for one black mana and a card is pretty good. If you need more explanation, you might want to give up Magic for tic tac toe.

Cabal Ritual - SI reaches threshold very easily. In variants with Simian Spirit Guide this can be used for a turn1 draw4, as well as cast after a Dark Ritual to leaving mana floating post-draw4. Without effects that reduce our graveyard size like Diminishing Returns, Cabal Rit is a monster.

Culling the Weak - BBBB for B and a creature. This is a defining card of the SI archetype, and the card that allows it exist. Culling the Weak gives you density of black rituals necessary to play a mass of spells with 2-3 black mana in their casting cost.

Lion's Eye Diamond - Although I'm not currently favoring it in QSI, the ability to get three mana of any color is extremely potent when combined with Brainstorm, Infernal Tutor, IGG, Diabolic Intent, or Goblin Charbelcher. If you run tutors, you should likely also run LED. It's important to note that LED can be an extremely risky gamble into a draw4, so break LED into a draw4 with extreme caution (or rather, with your balls against the grinder).

Simian Spirit Guide - Recommended recently after testing done by wastedlife, Simian Spirit Guide allows easy casting of Empty the Warrens and acceleration into Cabal Ritual and Infernal Tutor. This significantly speeds up versions that play it by enabling "fizzles" that produce large amounts of Goblin tokens.

Rite of Flame - SI doesn't play Rite of Flame because it has no use for red mana. Changing the deck to use Rite of Flame will almost always require Burning Wish, which takes away space from draw4s leading to you building TES.

Seething Song - See Rite of Flame

Lotus Bloom - This card is simply too slow for a deck that wants to win turns 1-3. Drawing these off of a draw4 is like drawing a currently dead card, but worse since you cannot go off the next turn with Lotus Bloom.

Creatures (aka Tall Men)

Phyrexian Walker/Shield Sphere/Ornithopter - Walker and Shield Sphere are generally played first as they have the fattest asses making them the hardest to kill. These creatures add storm as well as enable Culling the Weak, Diabolic Intent, and Cabal Therapy's flashback. Furthermore, they can block while you setup. The major reason to play these over Trinket Mage/Priest of Gix is that they can be used to start you combo using Culling the Weak without extra mana.

Trinket Mage - Mage isn't played because its casting cost slows the deck down considerably. Playing this takes away Culling the Weak as a first turn play.

Priest of Gix - See trinket mage.

Dark Confidant - many times dark confidant comes out of the sideboard. While it may be counter-intuitive to play Dark Confidant in a draw4 deck, if you are resolving confidant, you have likely not resolved a draw4 yet. Even so, the average mana cost of this deck is extremely low, and the likelyhood of confidant killing you at 9-10 life is very low. The extra cards drawn off an early confidant far outweigh any lifeloss (that will simply be halved anyway as you start to combo). Because of draw4 math, you can safely go down to 16 before you start losing draw4s.

Avatar of Discord - sometimes played in the sideboard, Avatar of Discard was part of "The Man Plan", a sideboard strategy that revolved around boarding into high power creatures with evasion against difficult matchups. With the advent of Empty the Warrens, this is largely unnecessary. This was normally played with Tomb of Urami and either Vampiric Spirit or Phyrexian Negator.

Vampiric Spirit - see avatar of discord

Phyrexian Negator - see avatar of discord

Tomb of Urami - sometimes played as an alternate win condition, this can provide you with a 5/5 flyer for the mere cost of 2BB and your lands. Seeing as you play very few lands, this is often a bargain against unprepared control decks. Tomb of Urami is still sometimes played, unlike Avatar of Discord, Phyrexian Negator, and Vampiric Spirit due to its usefulness as an actual land when needed. That said, the lifeloss will quickly add up if you tap it multiple turns in a row. This isn't a bad random land to place in your deck.

Business

Cruel Bargain/Infernal Contract - "drawing 4 cards is busted" You can safely ignore the lose half your life part since you only need 1 life point anyway ;) SI was originally designed around and still uses the power of these draw4s to stock its hand with useful rituals and win conditions in order to overwhelm an opponent. Much of the fun, consistency, and inconsistency of SI can all be traced back to these cards. Part of designing a good SI build is making sure you can survive a bad draw4 as well as mitigating the chances of one. It generally pays to be highly aggressive with draw4s in order to see as many cards as possible. "When in doubt, draw some cards."

Meditate - Yet another draw4, this one is instant-speed, blue, and doesn't cost life. Meditate, while it can be played on your own turn, allows you to cast it on your opponent's end step, dropping them with a turn they weren't expecting and letting you untap with up to 11 cards post draw step. In a deck like SI, it is very difficult to not win when you have 11 cards in your hand.

Infernal Tutor - Infernal Tutor allows you to double up rituals, blockers, mana, discard cards (with a chrome mox in hand, possibly to get hellbent for a second Infernal Tutor), IGG-loop (Ill-Gotten Gains), and many times to find whatever you need. This is most powerful when finding Cabal Therapy, Tendrils of Agony, or Ill-Gotten Gains. Combine with a Lion's Eye Diamond to get a Demonic Tutor with Black Lotus added on. SI, like Iggy Pop, can sometimes "just win" by getting 2 rituals that will net BBB and an Infernal Tutor with Hellbent to find an IGG, recurring Infernal Tutor and 2 Rituals. An often-useful play is casting an IGG in hand to recur two ritual effects and an Infernal Tutor to find a win condition, since the IGG will not only generate mana, but also provide Hellbent.

Diabolic Intent - this "fixed" Demonic Tutor generally requires you play 10+ creatures, but rewards you with the abiliy to find any card required for only a creature and 1B. Whether you play Infernal Tutor, Diabolic Intent, or both, largely depends on what your build is trying to do. Lately, Infernal Tutor has been favored for allowing the IGG loop as well as not requiring extra creatures.

Ill-Gotten Gains - A general storm enabler in SI, IGG allows you to replay things from your graveyard, giving you hellbent in the process. This is important in builds that play Infernal Tutor as often casting the IGG to return an earlier played Tutor will result in being able to replay tutor and finding a game-ending Tendrils. It's worth noting that IGG can be played as a mass-discard spell if necessary, as well as being able to return a Cabal Rit and two draw4s.

Tendrils of Agony - The primary win condition of SI, this can be played for upwards of 80 lifeloss in a single turn per copy of Tendrils. Multiple by the number of Tendrils and add in Ill-Gotten Gains and it's possible to take down very large life totals with Tendrils. The standard gameplan of SI is to play a lethal Tendrils of Agony (by default, with 9 storm), although mini-tendrils (less than lethal) for lifegain to play more draw4s are common.

Empty the Warrens - The favored secondary win condition of SI (and storm in general), ETW gives you flexibility to create fewer storm than needed for a lethal Tendrils of Agony but also put significant pressure on your opponent.

Brain Freeze - Another secondary win condition, Brain Freeze allows U/B versions with multiple lands an out against Mage on tendrils without resorting to finding and resolving bounce/removal. Given the easy storming capabilities of SI, a lethal or near-lethal Brain Freeze is not difficult.

Goblin Charbelcher - Yet another win condition, this is normally played by B/g variants with Land Grant. Belcher is unique among secondary win conditions in that it is largely unaffected by standard hate cards. Indeed, it was common in the past for control players to fall to SI post-Arcane Lab or Meddling Mage due to Goblin Charbelcher.

Brainstorm - a previously unplayed draw/optimiztion spell, Brainstorm became significantly better when more fetchlands were added. Brainstorm allows you to build a signifcant hand to overpower control, while digging for needed cards against other archetypes. Never dead, late game brainstorms can be imprinted on Chrome Mox to cast Meditate when not needed. Note, if you haven't already, the Brainstorm + fetchland mini combo.

Cabal Therapy - a mass discard spell made better by our Tall Men, Cabal Therapy lets you rid yourself of problem cards that stop your combo, allow your opponent to win, and gives you information at the same time. It is very important to note that casting IGG with an enemy Force of Will/Stifle/Trickbind in the graveyard is much more acceptable in SI than in Iggy Pop or TES since you can just flashback Cabal Therapy with a creature before casting other spells. Furthermore, Cabal Therapy can be used as a storm enabler or hellbent enabler when necessary.

Mystical Tutor - while never a maindeck card due to speed and space requirements, Mystical Tutor has recently been considered as a sideboard option to increase the numbers of IGG or bounce available without taking up so many slots. This accels against discard, which is where it is being tested.

Removal

Naturalize/Oxidize/Emerald Charm/Krosan Grip/Ancient Grudge - Of actual artifact/enchantment removal, Naturalize is generally favored due to casting cost, although cases can be made for Krosan Grip or Oxidize depending on your manabase and expected meta.

Massacre - This removes troublesome True Believers, Meddling Mages, and sometimes Goblin Hordes, usually for 0 mana.

Chain of Vapor/Echoing Truth - these can be used against any problem permanent, with Echoing Truth being especially useful against enemy combo decks utilitizing Empty the Warrens, or against decks that would play multiples of things like Meddling Mage/Pyrostatic Pillar/Chalice of the Void/Arcane Lab.

Hurkyl's Recall/Rebuild - Given that SI's largest problems come from Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere, most sideboards pack one or both of these in an effort to not lose to Chalices. While it doesn't happen often, each can both be used to generate storm off Tall Men/Moxen/Petals if the conditions are right.

Other sideboard options:

Ill-Gotten Gains - Recently moved to the sideboard in some lists, it is played with Mystical Tutor to shore up discard-based aggro control matchups.

Mystical Tutor - Recently tested in order to maximize sideboard slots through a silver-bullet system. Still under consideration.

Xantid Swarm - Useful against reactive blue strategies and Orim's Chant, this allows you to go off unmolested and can be sacrificed in the second mainphase to Culling the Weak or Diabolic Intent once its ability has resolved.

Defense Grid - Again, useful against reactive strategies, without as much vulnerability as Xantid Swarm to common removal. Late game, this is probably worse than Xantid Swarm as your opponent can usually just pay the extra mana.

Duress - While Cabal Therapy is almost always better, a case could be made for Duress since it will almost always hit something. Given that it cannot stop multiple threats, and it can't be flashed back, I personally do not play it, but it is still a consideration.

Playing SI

While SI can be pushed into extreme turn 1 kill percentages, the days of racing Force of Will every game are pretty much gone. Instead, SI looks to gain card advantage through draw4s, Brainstorms, Dark Confidant, and constantly test for openings. When an opening is found, you seek to press the advantage by playing a multitude of spells and eventually a Tendrils. With Empty the Warrens in the deck, baiting countermagic for storm becomes an option, especially with more rituals and draw4s in hand, since you will then be able to apply pressure from the attack step and through drawing more cards (into a now much smaller Tendrils than previously required).

Common openings include Brainstorm, Dark Rit/Culling the Weak into a Draw4, and Cabal Therapy. Alternately, with red versions, opening with 6-8 tokens is a good start, along with the standard draw4 opening. In general, you want to draw as many cards as you can, as early as you can, in order to be able to present a Tendrils/ETW as fast as possible. Many times this means playing a draw4 into a Brainstorm and passing the turn with a fully stocked and optimized hand. This method allows you to more fully exploit the additional lands that newer lists play.

Something to remember when attempting to combo off is how much mana you have floating versus what you can use to continue comboing off. This is the difference between opening Dark Rit, Draw4 and Dark Rit, Cabal Rit, Draw4. If you hand has another 1cc accelerant and something to do with it, it is probably wise to spend the extra rit in the hopes of continuing your combo. If you are missing multiple things, it is better to save the Cabal Rit for a later turn (probably the next one).

Things to look for in an opening hand are business, ritual effects, and starting mana, with mana to start with being the most important. Business is the most plentiful asset in the deck, so if you open a hand with good intial mana, ritual effects, and a couple blockers, it is likely a keeper. Mulliganing aggressively with SI is suggested, since your ability to quickly recover from mulls with draw4s is unparalleled.

Matchups

I'll put up general strategies for matchups later, as well as some games against each archetype either today or later this weekend.

I'm working on blending the QSI list (that currently don't run a second win condition main) with the SITES list to provide yet more threats without taking anything away. I'm open for suggestions on how to do this. I prefer to play with QSI though, as I believe it is the strongest test list to date (only lacking a definite sideboard plan and the maindeck ETW so far).

Questions, thoughts, comments? I'll get a matchup guide up soon, and some play scenarios with a slightly modified QSI build and explanations for each of those card choice (as opposed to a general archetype explanation).

Links to Previous Discussion about SI:

Old Primer and Discussion on MTG Salvation - http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=58807