[Deck] RW Rifter (White-Based Control)

[Zilla]

(Courtesy of Mr. Nightmare/Anwar):

WR Lightning Rift, aka Rifter, has roots tied deep in Onslaught Block. It was constructed in those days to combat the Aggro decks in the format, and was looked into as a deck that smashed the face of Vial Goblins when it was suggested by Fakespam in CanGD1. The first build (Fakespam’s) revolved around finding and playing Humility, and using cycling cards and Lightning Rift to clear the board and shock your opponent to death. The deck had answers to a variety of situations using Burning Wish, and took home the prize in CanGD1. This is the build from that contest:

LIST

The list had several problems. First and foremost, it loses miserably to all shapes and sizes of combo. With the rise of Solidarity, Rifter fell out of favor, as it was basically an empty chair when paired with the deck.

At the same time, Jack Elgin (TheInfamousBearAssassin) was developing Mono-White Control, aka Rabid Wombat:

Land:
19x Snow-Covered Plains
4x Secluded Steppe

Creatures:
4x Eternal Dragon

Spells:
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Abeyance
4x Renewed Faith
4x Decree of Justice
3x Wing Shards
3x Wrath of god
3x Humility
3x Gilded Light
3x Akroma's Vengeance
2x Rune of Protection: Red

Sideboard:
3x Phyrexian Furnace
3x Disenchant
3x Aura of Silence
3x Orim's Chant
3x Genju of the Fields

This deck’s strengths lie in the same places as Rifter, as well as having one of the most stable manabases in the format. Rather than focusing on Enlightened Tutor to find its answers, Wombat concentrated on a slew of cycling cards and cantrips, as well as adding Rune of Protection: Red to the main in order to help the Goblin and Burn matchups. To help shore the combo matchup, it included maindeck Abeyances, as well as a board almost solely focused on beating combo. On the other hand, the deck has an innate ability to bore its pilot to death, and draws as many games as Dragon, but not on purpose.

The key to making RW Rifter a competitive and powerful deck was combining the two decks. It used the cantrips and cycling advantages of Wombat, and the added speed and removal of Rifter. The new deck is regarded as the only truly viable control deck in the format, having surpassed Landstill in almost every way. It has made top 8 at all three of the most recent Legacy high profile events (GP:Philadelphia – 3rd; GP:Lille – 7th; SCG DfD – 3rd) and has solidified itself as a Deck To Beat.

WR Lightning Rift
7th Place (GP: Lille)

4 Secluded Steppe
4 Forgotten Cave
9 Plains
7 Mountain
2 Plateau

3 Eternal Dragon

3 Lightning Rift
3 Humility
2 Rune of Protection: Red

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Renewed Faith
3 Slice and Dice
3 Decree of Justice
3 Pyroclasm
2 Disenchant
2 Abeyance
2 Akroma's Vengeance

Sideboard:
3 Rule of Law
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pulse of the Fields
2 Disenchant
2 Abeyance
2 Boil
1 Pyroclasm
1 Pyroblast

While Rifter and Wombat may seem like very similar choices there are a few important differences. The ability to end the game in a timely fashion is one of the strengths of Rifter. Lightning Rift gives the deck the ability to end the game in a few turns. Wombat has a major issue with going to time. Rifter also has a none creature-based win condition (Lightning Rift) and that helps in control matchups were creature removal does not actually stop Rifter from winning.

Rifter does have one major drawback and that is its manabase can be disrupted. While the deck is highly resistant to Wasteland given that it plays 16 or so basic lands it can be affected by Rishadan Port especially by cutting off one of the 2 colors that might be needed at any given time. It is also more suspectible to land destruction strategies employed mainly by decks like Deadguy Ale.

Link to TMD Discussion

[Ghetto_Santa]

How well does this Against Combo? FlameVault. Savager Game?

[Sad Alien]

The primer on the TMD thread mentions the suspicious absence of a green splash.

I spent an hour and a half trying to mix up a decent manabase for this mysterious green splash.

My tear ducts are raw and crusty.

Life of the Loam ain't worth it.

[dontbiteitholmes]

You didn't talk about the Burning Wish option. Can we start a discussion on the Pros and Cons of Burning Wish and what a wishboard should look like.
I'm glad to see this is finally a DTB, I was actually planning on playing this at D4D but decided on Enchatress since I only had 1 Humility but I had 4 Moats.

[AnwarA101]

You didn't talk about the Burning Wish option. Can we start a discussion on the Pros and Cons of Burning Wish and what a wishboard should look like.
I'm glad to see this is finally a DTB, I was actually planning on playing this at D4D but decided on Enchatress since I only had 1 Humility but I had 4 Moats.

Burning Wish was not discussed in large part because the decks that have done well at recent tournaments did not run Burning Wish. Burning Wish is an interesting choice and does have some pros and cons. The main advantage would be that it would give you some flexibility in the main deck since you always had the option to use Burning Wish to find other answers that have to be included in the main deck currently. If one were to run Burning Wish it seems that narrow spells like Disenchant and Pyroclasm would not be needed since one could just run some equivalent wish target.

The main problem ofcourse would be that Burning Wish does limit your sideboarding options. The space available for cards like Rule of Law, Pyroblast, and other such anti-combo cards would be difficult to fit in with a wish sideboard. Without such cards the combo matchup is virtually impossible to win. This is the main drawback of the deck and the sideboard should help such matchups and not hurt it.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Burning Wish was not discussed in large part because the decks that have done well at recent tournaments did not run Burning Wish. Burning Wish is an interesting choice and does have some pros and cons. The main advantage would be that it would give you some flexibility in the main deck since you always had the option to use Burning Wish to find other answers that have to be included in the main deck currently. If one were to run Burning Wish it seems that narrow spells like Disenchant and Pyroclasm would not be needed since one could just run some equivalent wish target.

The main problem ofcourse would be that Burning Wish does limit your sideboarding options. The space available for cards like Rule of Law, Pyroblast, and other such anti-combo cards would be difficult to fit in with a wish sideboard. Without such cards the combo matchup is virtually impossible to win. This is the main drawback of the deck and the sideboard should help such matchups and not hurt it.

If it strengthens non-combo matchups it may be safe to run. As has been said before there is 1 great combo deck and 1 decent combo deck and the rest suck balls. If you play in a non-combo meta do you thing Burning Wish is a good choice?

[AnwarA101]

If it strengthens non-combo matchups it may be safe to run. As has been said before there is 1 great combo deck and 1 decent combo deck and the rest suck balls. If you play in a non-combo meta do you thing Burning Wish is a good choice?

I've never played the deck with Burning Wish. The obvious sideboard cards are Wrath of God and Pyroclasm. Perhaps even Boiling Seas versus blue-based control. What else would be good? You could cut Disenchant from the main as well as the Pyroclasms.

As a side note, there should probably be 4 Eternal Dragons in a build of Rifter. The card cycles for lands and serves as another win condition. I believe the version at GP Lille was running 4.

[Revert_To_Saved]

As a side note, there should probably be 4 Eternal Dragons in a build of Rifter. The card cycles for lands and serves as another win condition. I believe the version at GP Lille was running 4.

Lille didn't, but Philly and the Duel for Duals lists both did.

The thing about Burning Wish is that most of the time it's just so godawful slow. With the lack of good bomby type cards to sideboard, I don't see much reason to run it over, say, maindeck Pyroclasms.

[Tao]

I've never played the deck with Burning Wish. The obvious sideboard cards are Wrath of God and Pyroclasm. Perhaps even Boiling Seas versus blue-based control. What else would be good?

Decree of Justice would be good.

[Vardaman]

Shattering Spree, another Slice and Dice if needed...

[dontbiteitholmes]

I could literally think of 50 cards that would be good to Wish for at one time or another. I'm not saying it's the right choice all the time, or that it's the direction this deck should go in, but it's certainly got potential and I have already seen people running Wishes in online play and found it to be stronger at times then if their Wishes had been say a Disenchant or a Pyroclasm.
[Edit] Oh BTW what does this deck do when it starts getting more popular and people start running Anarchy in their sideboards again?

[Citrus-God]

I for one vote that Burning Wish should be in the deck. If can give us cute answers like Boiling Seas, Meltdown, Terashi's Grasp, more random crap, and lot's of weird stuff, and oh, Ruination. I mean if they counter your answer, you still have like 36 other answers in your deck.

[Lukas Preuss]

[Edit] Oh BTW what does this deck do when it starts getting more popular and people start running Anarchy in their sideboards again?

Why exactly would people run Anarchy against this deck? The list in the opening post has 5 white permanents (3 Humility, 2 RoP: Red), not counting the Eternal Dragons. Anarchy wouldn't be the right choice to disrupt this deck... Maybe something like Flashfires, Winter Orb or Armageddon would be better, since the deck needs quite some mana to run smoothly, but there's always Sacred Grounds as an answer (at least to Flashfires and Armageddon).

[dontbiteitholmes]

Why exactly would people run Anarchy against this deck? The list in the opening post has 5 white permanents (3 Humility, 2 RoP: Red), not counting the Eternal Dragons. Anarchy wouldn't be the right choice to disrupt this deck... Maybe something like Flashfires, Winter Orb or Armageddon would be better, since the deck needs quite some mana to run smoothly, but there's always Sacred Grounds as an answer (at least to Flashfires and Armageddon).

Yeah you're right, I guess as an Enchantress player I just live in fear of Anarchy. By the time they could drop Anarchy and swing for the win you should already have stabalized.

[Gabbatron]

Hello, this is my very first post on the source. If this deck would use Burning wish, is´t it possible to have Anarchy in its sideboard against other decks using more white permanents? When playing against something like angel stompy a well timed anarchy should be helpfull, right? And if you allready had something like Humility in play, you could instead wish for pyroclasm or another board sweeper. This might however be a very small point since not many decks include lots of white permanents right now...

[Finn]

umm... Humility flat-out owns so many decks. Goblins, for one, need to be rid of it in the worst way. Any of the mono-red Goblin decks will have to pack Anarchy for the occasion. They *have to* or simply fold in the mtachup.

[syssc9]

Will somone please post one of the tourney winning decklists that include Burning Wish? Or a link to it and its sideboard? Thank you... I would like to see lots more discussion of this deck and based on the posts above, the Wish option looks like a good place to start.

[Slay]

The tourney winning decklists did not include Burning Wish. Wish is something that has not proven itself yet.
-Slay

[FakeSpam]

As great of an idea as burning wish was in theory, in practice it was less than stellar. I originally threw burning wish in because there just weren't enough slot for cards that did something.

[syssc9]

@Slay
Oh my, thanks for straightening me out. I thought I had read above that 2 of the winning lists ran 4 Burning Wish. The post by Revert to Saved says 4 Eternal Dragon, not 4 Wish. Guess I can chalk that up to Wish-full thinking (groan…).