New Lockdown Combo Idea

[swarm187]

I'm very new to the format, but I've been playing around with Painter's Servant/Grindstone variants and I think I've found something that might be viable...maybe not tier 1, but we'll see.

The basic premise is to keep the Servant/Grindstone win condition, but to augment the rest of the deck around Erayo, Soratami Ascendant and Ethersworn Canonist. By getting out an early Erayo, and flipping him, dropping a Canonist is pretty much GG. Erayo counters your opponent's first spell every turn and, coupled with Ethersworn Canonist, spells disaster for any deck not running tons and tons of artifacts.
The reason I started using Servant/Grindstone in this build is because both of the wincon cards are artifacts, easily tutorable, and cheap. The real trick of this deck is getting Erayo flipped. Here's what I have thus far, please LMK what you think!

4x Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
4x Painter's Servant
4x Ethersworn Canonist

4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Brainstorm
4x Daze
2x Engineered Explosives
4x Mox Diamond
4x Lotus Petal
4x Lion's Eye Diamond

4x Tundra
4x Flooded Strand
2x Academy Ruins
6x Island
6x Plains


I don't have a set sideboard, obviously, but there are a TON of good cards that fit neatly in this deck. Some cards I have thought about adding maindeck, or to the sideboard, are as follows:

Spell Snare- obviously hoses a bunch of good spells that are running rampant in Legacy.
Counterspell- enough said
Enlightened Tutor- tutors for pretty much any needed piece or adds to your spell count for cheap.
Helm of Awakening- makes everything cheaper to push through 4 spells in one turn, the major drawback being that it helps your opponent too.
Force of Will- amazing card, but I don't have a whole lot of blue spells to make it as effective as possible.


I've been testing this casually against some Legacy decks and it's not running very effectively. It pushes out a few wins here and there, but not as many as I think it's capable of. Please post some ideas for maindeck cards or other builds that might use this combo!

[rockout]

Have you tried Trinket Mage? It searches out a lot of pieces of your deck and ups your blue count so you can possibly run force. In a deck like yours more counters the better to protect your team.

I also just realized you are missing grindstone. Your land count looks a little high with such a low curve. 22 lands + 12 zero cost mana sources. You can easily support 18-19 lands and add in the grindstones you are missing. Good luck.

[Skeggi]

What's your plan against Krosan Grip? It's in almost every sideboard of a deck packing a Goyf.

[swarm187]

Sorry,
After posting the original list I realized that I posted the list I had before I started really tinkering with it. Here's the updated list:

4x Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
4x Ethersworn Canonist
4x Painter's Servant

3x Swords to Plowshares
3x Brainstorm
4x Daze
3x Stifle
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
3x Mox Diamond
3x Lotus Petal
4x Grindstone
2x Engineered Explosives

4x Tundra
4x Flooded Strand
3x Ancient Tomb
2x City of Traitors
2x Academy Ruins
2x Island
2x Plains

Rockout- I seriously considered Trinket Mage, but his 3cc seemed to throw everything off. When all was said and done, I prefered E-Tutoring at instant speed for two less. The main benefit to having Mages over Tutors was that he upped my blue count, but still not enough to warrant Force of Wills, IMO.

Skeggi- Unfortunately, Krosan Grip murders a lot of artifact/enchantment ideas. It is played a lot, but it can only pick apart pieces of this deck. Although I don't have answers to the Split Second ability, the idea behind this deck is to flood the board with threatening artifacts and enchantments and let my opponent pick their poison. Faced with Gripping a flipped Erayo, a Grindstone, a Canonist, or a Servant, it's really hard to swing the game by getting rid of just one of those. It is a big threat, but it isn't unmanagable.

[Poron]

Krosan Grip is countered by a flipped Erayo + Canonist

[Aggro_zombies]

I also just realized you are missing grindstone. Your land count looks a little high with such a low curve. 22 lands + 12 zero cost mana sources. You can easily support 18-19 lands and add in the grindstones you are missing. Good luck.
He runs Mox Diamond, hence the high land count (probably).

And yeah, this deck really needs Force to be good. Daze alone is not enough counter protection. I would recommend dropping the Moxen and LED for four Ponder and four Force.

[Media314r8]

I like that both lock pieces are good on their own, and both hurt combo quite a lot. Perhaps an affinity shell would be better? Wiining with a 10/10 Master of Etherium is pretty easy when your opponent cannot do ANYTHING. Either that or lower the number of combo pieces you run - if you're locking your opponent out of the game AND running countermagic, you should have plenty of time to find your combo pieces, 4 of each are hardly necessary.

[Aggro_zombies]

I like that both lock pieces are good on their own, and both hurt combo quite a lot. Perhaps an affinity shell would be better? Wiining with a 10/10 Master of Etherium is pretty easy when your opponent cannot do ANYTHING. Either that or lower the number of combo pieces you run - if you're locking your opponent out of the game AND running countermagic, you should have plenty of time to find your combo pieces, 4 of each are hardly necessary.

I tried this lock combo in an Affinity shell. It's too slow and worse than just playing a regular Affinity deck.

[swarm187]

I like that both lock pieces are good on their own, and both hurt combo quite a lot. Perhaps an affinity shell would be better? Wiining with a 10/10 Master of Etherium is pretty easy when your opponent cannot do ANYTHING. Either that or lower the number of combo pieces you run - if you're locking your opponent out of the game AND running countermagic, you should have plenty of time to find your combo pieces, 4 of each are hardly necessary.


I was actually thinking of running Tezzeret in here too, although I'm not sure what he would replace as a two-of. Master of Etherium is a good idea, what would you take out to make that viable? I can see dropping the number of Erayos down to 3 because he's the last card you want doubles of in your hand.
I'm also concerned with the lack of draw/deck manipulation in here, I find myself top-decking an awful lot, even after I have the lock online. I was thinking of trying to encorporate Counter/Top in here, but I think that might be throwing too many concepts together and ending up with something worse than any of the originals.

[SpikeyMikey]

He runs Mox Diamond, hence the high land count (probably).

And yeah, this deck really needs Force to be good. Daze alone is not enough counter protection. I would recommend dropping the Moxen and LED for four Ponder and four Force.

That wouldn't work. In order to flip Erayo, he needs a high count of free junk; ditching 0cc artifacts is a bad way to go about it. There wouldn't be enough blue to run force with consistency anyway; Erayo isn't something you can pitch to FoW because it's the key to the lock. That means 14 non-FoW blue cards.

[Aggro_zombies]

That wouldn't work. In order to flip Erayo, he needs a high count of free junk; ditching 0cc artifacts is a bad way to go about it. There wouldn't be enough blue to run force with consistency anyway; Erayo isn't something you can pitch to FoW because it's the key to the lock. That means 14 non-FoW blue cards.
Then at the very least he should run cards that aren't dead, LED being a case in point. You would never, ever want to sacrifice this for mana while you're trying to get the combo or while you're trying to combo off, making it worse than something like Welding Jar, which can at least protect your Canonist from EE and burn.

EDIT: I should add that this deck really wants more early-game disruption. Even if you get a god hand and go balls-to-the-wall nuts, the earliest you can hope to combo out is turn two:

Turn one: land, Petal, Erayo/Canonist (five cards)
Turn two: land/Petal. Depending on what you have, you play Canonist/Erayo, then some number of artifacts, or some number of spells, then Canonist.

You're then left with a soft lock and one or two cards in hand and one or two lands in play. Note that the turn-two win requires no disruption on your opponent's part against either Erayo or Canonist - which means no counters and no creature removal against Erayo in response to the flip trigger. Going off of his latest list, he has four Daze as his only protection for the combo, which is not enough to adequately protect it. Also, he has only three (!) Brainstorm to find his combo and four other artifacts or spells, which means that one well-timed Swords or Force will be GG.

In other words, he's playing an extremely fragile two-card, creature-based combo where the loss of either card is crippling given the almost total lack of search. He needs more protection or more search or he's going to take it in the ass from anything that uses creature or artifact removal. That's why I said he needs 4 Ponder, 4 Brainstorm at a minimum - he can't always count on having Canonist and Erayo and a critical mass of spells in his opening grip or top two to three cards. It would also be acceptable to run 4 Counterbalance, 3-4 Top - but that begs the question: why play this combo?

Also, Trinket Mage. Deck needs more of them.

[emidln]

Krosan Grip is countered by a flipped Erayo + Canonist

Unless your opponent leads with Sensei's Divining Top, Lotus Petal, Phyrexian Dreadnought, Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, Chalice of the Void, Engineered Explosives, or any of the tons of other playable artifacts in legacy before casting KGrip as the first nonartifact spell.

[swarm187]

In other words, he's playing an extremely fragile two-card, creature-based combo where the loss of either card is crippling given the almost total lack of search. He needs more protection or more search or he's going to take it in the ass from anything that uses creature or artifact removal. That's why I said he needs 4 Ponder, 4 Brainstorm at a minimum - he can't always count on having Canonist and Erayo and a critical mass of spells in his opening grip or top two to three cards. It would also be acceptable to run 4 Counterbalance, 3-4 Top - but that begs the question: why play this combo?




I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I originally tried to fit this 'soft lock' into a Landstill shell, but it seemed quicker and more viable in a deck like my list above.
I am in no way saying this build is optimal, actually I'm asking for advice on ways to build it better. Ponder, for instance, is a great idea. But apart from just throwing out reasons why this deck will fail, I was looking for ways to improve the design.

Counter/Top, as I stated before, is a great way to filter your draw. What should I take out to make room for that? Is there opportunity to splash black for early hand disruption and acceleration through Dark Rit? I mean, there are plenty of ways to make this deck better, I was just hoping for some help and constructive criticism, not, "This deck dies to Krosan Grip or a well placed Swords." Sadly, there are alot of decks that get bad beats from one card. Tendrils can lose to a well timed Stifle, so what? That doesn't mean the deck shouldn't be explored.

I agree that more counter/control elements are needed to make this deck run competitively. So what are your thoughts? Classic Counterspell is fine, as well as Spell Snare and Stifle. I don't think I have the blue sources to run FoW effectively, at least not in the current build, but what other counterspells should I test?

What do you guys think about trying Intuition/Accumulated Knowledge here for some card draw? That would definitely up my blue count for FoW and give me a little more punch with card draw.

Do you think Counter/Top fits here? I mean, it is artifacts and enchantments, which seems to fit nicely into the mix.

Please keep the suggestions coming!

[Aggro_zombies]

Trinket Mage.

If you run Mage, you can support 4 Counterbalance, 1-2 Top, 1-2 EE, and a lower artifact count. Dropping the number of lands you run makes Chrome Mox a better choice than Mox Diamond - remember also that you can play Chrome Mox and not imprint if you're trying to get to four spells. It also increases your blue count to a level that allows you to support 4 Daze, 4 Force in addition to 4 CB, giving you a much better counter suite that also makes the deck less reliant on the firm lock. If you run Stifle, you could also run Dreadnought (fetchable with Trinket Mage!). Alternately, since you're trying to play a bunch of spells in one turn, splashing for red and running some Empty the Warrens could be interesting. If you go into three colors, run one of each of the appropriate artifact lands to make Mage a potential fixer.

No matter what you do, you need a better clock than Canonist. Swinging for two per turn is slow as hell and gives them that much more wriggle room to get out from under your lock. Trinket into Nought is one route; EtW as the fourth or fifth spell in the flip turn is another; Painter-Stone is a third.

[Mordenkaynen]

In order to flip Erayo, he needs a high count of free junk; ditching 0cc artifacts is a bad way to go about it.
That's true and that's the main problem with erayo in a deck with "usual" manabase. I'd like to list some (more and less) useful Erayo flippers:
alternative costs:
[MM] - Land Grant // situational card, sometimes gives much information that's not good
[NE] - Mind Swords // relevant since they need additional spells to cast through Erayo and you most likely has already empty hand
[NE] - Skyshroud Cutter // free creature, blocks lackey
[PY] - Snag // defensive card
[MM] - Tidal Bore // (says "you may")
[MM] - Unmask // free disruption, but card disadvantage
[TS] - Snapback // with Erayo it's a removal spell, with free creatures it's 2 spells (that need 2 cards though); useful against Dreadnaughts and Tombstalkers
[MI] - Chalice of the Void
[SA] - Sigil of Distinction // improves ugly clock of small creatures
including those ones that need special shell:
[SA] - Salvage Titan // artifacts
[VI] - Fireblast // mountains
[NE] - Mogg Alarm // mountains
[MM] - Delraich // black creatures (painter can make them black)
sending mana back:
[UL] - Crop Rotation // can be descent since crap need space and finishers also do so
[UL] - Cloud of Faeries
[UL] - Snap (the same thing as Snapback, but without CdA)
[SM] - Manamorphose
[GP] - Wild Cantor
[7E] - Blood Pet // for blue-black shell
[US] - Priest of Gix // the same
free and "free now":
[TP] - Lotus Petal
[MI] - Chrome Mox
[SH] - Mox Diamond
[FS] - Summoner's Pact // narrow card, doesn't fetch Erayo without Painter
[LG] - Kobolds of Kher Keep // and other 0cc creatures with power 0
suspend (1-2):
[TS] - Rift Bolt
[TS] - Search for Tomorrow
[FS] - Petrified Plating // interesting with free creatures
targeting removal:
[MM] - Snuff Out
[FS] - Slaughter Pact // kills Magus of the Moon
- Sickening Shoal
[PY] - Abolish // in some metas it can be used in main
[PY] - Flameshot
[AL] - Contagion
[AL] - Pyrokinesis
[MM] - Thunderclap
pump-removal:
[MM] - Ramosian Rally
[MM] - Invigorate
[NE] - Dark Triumph
other combat-removal:
[NE] - Angelic Favor // needs white creatures (painter can make them white)
[BK] - Shining Shoal // These cards are not quite good, they're here mainly for listing almost all the tehs.
non-targeting "removal":
[FD] - [B]Engineered Explosives
[PY] - Outbreak
[NE] - Ensnare
[MM] - Cave-In
counter-magic (you can use it either to counter their staff or your free spells for flipping):
[NE] - Daze
[BK] - Disrupting Shoal
[PY] - Foil
[AL] - Force of Will
[MM] - Misdirection
That said, I personaly like Erayo more in dedicated combo (belcher, or even warren belcher with 4 cantors, 4 manamorphoses, 4 petals, or in pretty non-existant zero-creatures combo).

[swarm187]

That's true and that's the main problem with erayo in a deck with "usual" manabase. I'd like to list some (more and less) useful Erayo flippers:
alternative costs:

Wow Morden, thanks for the list! There are definitely some cards I'll check out!
After tinkering with the deck a little more last night, I realized that I'm kind of fighting between two different styles of deckbuilding here, an issue that Morden hints at as well.

My original build, as well as the updated list, were attempts at a more combo-style deck. I wanted to end the game quickly, dumping my hand, flipping an Erayo, and using Servant/Grindstone to mill in a span of the first few turns. While this strategy has its advantages and disadvantages, the point is that it is a different strategy than using counters and control to stall the game until the soft lock is online and I can control out a win.
Both strategies are fine, the problem is that I have to pick one and stick to it, not just throw together an ugly conglomeration of both and try to make it work.

So, I built both last night and I am testing both to see which one works better and which one suits my playing style the best. I will say this, adding Trinket Mage, Ponder, Force of Will and Counterspell seems to make the deck much tougher to beat. The problem with that build is that, stalling the game usually allows my opponent to slip in crucial spells and win a close game. I feel like it's a bad Landstill deck rather than the deck I want it to be.
Keeping it more of a 'combo' deck and running more tutors works too, but the lack of counters and reactive spells really hurts. It can get run over by aggro at times, it can also be controlled fairly easily unless I get a great hand to start.


I am going to try to splash Red in tonight for cards like Fire//Ice, Rift Bolt, and Imperial Recruiter. Hopefully that will yield some good results. I am also going to try a Black splash for cards like Dark Rit, Snuff Out, Unmask, and maybe even something like Slaughter Pact. I'll post my findings within the next few days. Thanks for the ideas, please keep them coming!

[Mordenkaynen]

As food for thinking, here's a rough list of Erayo Belcher:

1 [A] - Bayou
1 [A] - Tropical Island
4 [MM] - Land Grant

4 [TP] - Lotus Petal
4 [MI] - Chrome Mox
4 [MR] - Lion's Eye Diamond
4 [AL] - Elvish Spirit Guide
4 [5E] - Dark Ritual

3 [RA] - Birds of Paradise
4 [IA] - Tinder Wall
4 [TP] - Eladamri's Vineyard

3 [MM] - Unmask
4 [LO] - Thoughtseize

3 [AL] - Lim-Dul's Vault
4 [MM] - Brainstorm
2 [FS] - Street Wraith

3 [SK] - Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
4 [MI] - Goblin Charbelcher

This list has some lack of tutors; I don't like it much since it has only 7 "socks" and Warren Belcher has 11; however, it has interesting disruption package of 7 discard spells. Yeap, Blood Pet can be interesting here.

[swarm187]

Update:
I ran through some of the different variations I had talked about, mainly splashing red and splashing black respectively, and I always seem to come back to good ol' UW.
So, I decided to tinker with it in those colors to find an optimal build. Honestly, I can flip Erayo regularly turn two, which is a huge stumbling block for my opponent. If I have a Canonist out as well, it's pretty much GG. Here's my updated list:

3x Painter's Servant
4x Ethersworn Canonist
4x Trinket Mage

4x Grindstone
4x Mox Diamond
3x Lotus Petal
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Brainstorm
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Daze
2x Hindering Light
1x Tezzeret, the Seeker

4x Tundra
3x Flooded Strand
3x Ancient Tomb
3x City of Traitors
1x Academy Ruins
3x Island
2x Plains


Here are the issues I'm having with the deck:

1. It is totally based on comboing off. Disruption can be handled, but aggro/burn give me trouble fairly regularly. There just isn't enough space to throw more disruption/control in without making the pieces lose their efficiency.
2. Drawing cards. Brainstorm rules in this deck, as does Trinket Mage, but if I get into top deck mode, I usually lose.
3. I need some type of bounce effect. Once the combo pieces are down, the game swings largely in my favor. I just need a way to bounce those spells that come out before I get the combo down. Snap is a great card for this, what do you think I should take out?
4. Tezzeret is a beast in this deck, but I don't want to make this a Tezzeret deck exclusively. Should I put another copy in the maindeck? The singleton has come out on occasion, but he is usually used for a few quick tutors, then a win-more condition.
5. The sideboard is totally up in the air. Any suggestions?