Cascade Balance

[Hunding Gjornersen]

Warning: Untested deck.

It probably goes without saying that Balance is right up there with the best cards ever printed. It's so good that even at twice the cmc (i.e. Balancing Act) it spawned highly successful decks in Standard and Extended. This thread addresses the interaction between the 3 cmc cascade cards from Alara Reborn and Restore Balance. So here's a list:

4 Ardent Plea
4 Violent Outburst

3 Restore Balance

4 Keldon Halberdeir
4 Durkwood Baloth
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Nihilith

3 Vendillion Clique
4 City of Solitude

4 Elvish Spirit Guide
3 Simian Spirit Guide

4 Archaeological Dig
4 Tinder Farm
4 Geothermal Crevice
3 Irrigation Ditch
4 Gemstone Mine

About the suspend creatures: I feel that you really want to be suspending 2 or 3 guys before blowing up the board, so I picked mostly guys that suspend for one mana. It's also important to get them out of your hand to make sure Restore Balance is a Mind Twist. Nihilith is the best suspend-for-2 creature out there, at least in this context. The unfortunate downside of these suspend-for-one guys is that none of them pitch to Force or Unmask. Thus, 4 City of Solitude was included. I don't like Clique here because it lets your opponent keep a Goyf or something after you Restore Balance. I just needed more disruption and didn't know what to do.

The rest of the list is pretty self-explanatory. I was thinking about running some Forbidden Orchards to support Demonic Dread. The tokens will get balanced away, but the Orchard (sans Gargadon) will let them keep a land which is just unacceptable. In this format you really need to clean them out with Restore Balance or else they'll just Brainstorm into lands and Goyf and wreck you while Keldon Halerberdeir watches from the sidelines.

[Skeggi]

Sacrificing all your land to Greater Gargadon in response to Restore Balance might be fun. Perhaps you need to find a way to ditch your hand too. Will One With Nothing see play in Legacy?

[zabuza]

I like this deck, but think you can do several changes to improve it.

First of all i´ll include vindicate or pulse in order to clear the table if needed and to gain tempo.

Lot of creatures with suspend aren´t the best option. I like nihilith and gargadon. Both of them comboes with balance and are bigger or have evasion.

As we are playing gargadon i´ll use evoke ceatures as ingot chewer and shriekmaw. Both of them helps with destroying chalices (who hurts as a lot) and creatures (meddling mages, goyfs, coatl or so) and can be sacrified to gargaddon or makes nihilith faster.

Shade of trokair is another option i like because is a nantuko shade that has 1 more thoughness and can block goyfs all the day.

Corpulent corpse could be playable and i´ll change vendillion clike for unmask because creatures are not usefull when you are trying to casta balance.

The only thing i would like to have is anything that provides us card advantage in order to have a robust control deck.

ideas? Suggestions?

[rufus]

This looks like it's putting all of its eggs in one basket. Anything that shuts down Suspend or Balancing Act will give it problems. Chalice @ 0, Trinisphere, Counterbalance or Force of Will come to mind.

On that note, Rainbow Vale might be more compatible with your concept than Forbidden Orchard.

Restore Balance only equalizes Lands, Creatures, and Cards in Hand. So, non-creature/non-land artifacts and enchantments stay in play. That means that, Chrome Mox, for example, should probably find a spot in your list.

It's not nearly so good a fit, but ,Deathcloud, Pox, and Smallpox use the same Creature/Land/Card-in-Hand format, and should have conceptual synergy here.

[Hunding Gjornersen]

Evoke creatures seem like a good answer to hate. Do you think they're maindeckable?

The reason for playing a lot of suspend guys is to empty your hand before Balancing. That's why they need to be cheap. Maybe Mindstab could be playable here. It's cheap to suspend (i.e. get out of your hand) and can help resolve Balance. It also pitches to Unmask which I'd really like to see run in this deck.

After blowing up all my lands, I don't think I'll have the mana to pump a shade. To support that guy you'd really need every land to tap for white, i.e. play a 5c mana base. In that case, you won't be able to kill all lands without a Gargadon.

Card advantage is nice in principle and in practice, but I don't know if this is the right place for it. You really want to take away all of your opponent's resources (all their creatures, all their lands, and all their cards in hand) with Balance. Otherwise, a couple of suspend creatures are going have a really hard time getting there.

[zabuza]

You are right, but the only problem is that opponent also plays. You can suspend anything in the world but you MUST ensure that balance is going to resolve. Cards that deal lot of damage to this deck are: Meddling Mage, Chalice of the void, Trinisphere, Counters, stifle (to cascade), and so.

Because of that you must play cards to avoid them. Ingot is good to deal with chalices and Spheres, shriekmaw is good to meddling, tarmos,..., and for counters you need to be proactive so unmask, mindstab, coercion and so are good to play this role.

To ensure you have any card advantage to find a cascade spell or to draw more nihiliths, gadons to play i was thinking on mulldrifter.

So defintely i think they must be played maindeck.

I was thinking on playing ancient tomb/city of traitors to ensure you can play coercion, mulldrifter very early on the game and play suspended critters to cast a win balance. I´ve supposed that if we play 4 citys of brass, 4 gemstone and 4 ancient tombs (and the 8 spirit guides) are enough to support multicolored spells. If you want you can play orchard because balance will destroy all tokens but is little more risky.

Vindicate is solid enough i think to be played in this deck, but need testing.

You are right, shadow is not good in this deck.

[Hunding Gjornersen]

It's tricky finding the right balance between cascade spells, disruption, and suspend-creatures. That's a common problem for all the cascade decks, I think. Based on zabuza's suggestions, here's a more disruptive list:

3 Ardent Plea
4 Violent Outburst
2 Demonic Dread

2 Restore Balance

3 Corpulent Corpse
4 Greater Gargadon
4 Nihilith

4 Mindstab
4 Unmask
3 Vindicate

3 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Simian Spirit Guide

4 Archaeological Dig
3 Sulfur Vent
3 Geothermal Crevice
4 Irrigation Ditch
3 Gemstone Mine
3 Forbidden Orchard

I chose Vindicate over evoke creatures for two reasons. It deals with any kind of permanent threat and pitches to Unmask. Pitching to Unmask is the reason a lot of cards are in here. Corpulent Corpse is regrettable at only 3 power, but Unmask is so good at emptying your hand and making sure Balance resolves.

I added 3 Forbidden Orchards to support 2 Demonic Dreads, bringing up the cascade-spell count to 9. There are many 1 and 2 cmc creatures in Legacy for Dread to target. It's also black and can be cast using SSG mana.

[zabuza]

OH, i was thinking how to improve the deck and i remebered a card that could be good enough to be tested: Persecute.

I know it´s very slow but it´s a must counter. If they dont then all blue cards will go to grave, (making faster nihilith´s appareance) and losing 2/3 cards by the way. This cards could be good in this deck because is playable in a cascade deck, but the only problem is that could be slow. Anyways i think that with vindicates, a couple of persecutes and unmask we have enough disruption to go on.

Another option TO sideboard is pulse of maelstrom and/or oblivion ring so we are not afraid any permanent on the game.

[zabuza]

Hi, i´ve developed a deck with cascade_balance that i think could be played in a tourney. I´m doubting about if playing it this afternoon or playing my old zoo because i haven´t tested the cascade deck a lot.

The idea of the deck is negating all resources to the oppoenent in order to avoiding him to recover himself.

The core of the deck is black so you can use a more suitable manabase than other versions.

The decklist is like the following:

4 Dakmor savage (to dredge them after balance and have B to cast our
spells. This land is slow but give us a a way to play
deck´s core cards like tombstalker, nihilith, shriekmaw and
so on)
4 badlands
4 bloodstained mire
4 forbidden orchard (for demonic dread target)
2 city of brass
------18 lands------
4 grater gargaddon (part of the combo and finisher)
4 nihilith (finisher)
4 shriekmaw (kill fater critters and target for gargadon)
4 tombstalker (easy to play after balance)
4 SSG (to make faster the combo and had mana when neccessary.)
4 ESG (The guides are useful too discardind them before balance allowing opponent to discard more )
------24 creatures-----
4 demonic dread
4 violent outburst
4 restore balance
------12 combo--------
4 unmask
4 vindicate
------8 utilities---------

SDB
4 maelstrom pulse (kill everybody minus lands)
4 pernicius deed ( kill everybody)
4 volcanic fallout (tribal and weenies)
3 faerie macabre (ichorid and loam)


In this deck i was trying to fit the next cards:

Wasteland (after balance if we deny the next land or couple of lands we are going to win for sure). Wasteland helps you too to combo (destroying our lands if neccesary).

Crucible of worlds (a very useful card with wastelands and after balance is game win)

I don´t know if maestrom pulse is better maindeck than vindicate because we have 10 resources that provide green istead of the only 6 that provides white. The only problem of maelstrom is taht we can´t destroy lands after balance and i don´t know if it could be neccesary because we can always re-combo again to negate mana. If we could use wastelands i think maesltroms would be betther than vindicate here.

Nother interesting sideborad options could be:

Hypergenesis: we have a lot of creatures here and although an hypergenesys is not as devastating in this deck as it could be in other decks, i think could be an interesting option.

Persecute: Mores discard for our blue "friends". In this line could be mindstab but i´m not very sol about that card.

Ingot chewer: we can use them in SDB in order to destroy chalices, dreadnoughts and so on and they are reciclable with gargaddon. I don´t know it they could be better than vindicate or pulse maindeck because we can destroy moxes and artifacts that our balances can´t deal with.

Krosan grip: Sideboard??

Any thoughts? How good you thik the deck is? should i play it today or is a crazy idea? Any improvements?

Thanks everybody.

I´ve played this deck this afternoon and have lost lot of games, but i think it could be improved a lot and now i know more about how to do it.

First round: Bye. Damn it!!!! I´VE GONE TO TEST THE DECK

Second round I´ve played against a U/G deck with tradewind rider, wall of blossoms an so on. I´ve los two games because i can´t search green when neccesary to pulse him (i´m going to replace orchard for bayou) and because he played 2 propaganda so i couldn´t attack with my army of beasts and horrors.

Third round i´ve played against Faerie Stompy. It was a draw. I win the first one and lost the second (NEVER sideboard hypergenesis, is a bad card in this deck). I changed the balances for genesis in second game and lose for it.

Fourth round played against canadian ThreshThreshThreshThreshThreshThreshThreshThresh. I lost 2-0 because i doesn´t draw mana in first game and because second game i couldn´t cascade.

I´ve decide to remove pulses and vindicate an use pernicius deed (it can solve the problem of artifacts and enchantments).

Beside of that i´m going to play fulminator mage. I think is a good choice nowdays.

Is mandatory playing 4 shriekmaw. I´ve only played 3 in this deck and lot of time hoped for drawing another. They only were little unuseful with moongose of the canadian ThreshThreshThreshThreshThreshThreshThreshThresh but shriekmaw killed lot of stuff like coatl, tarmogoyf, sea drake and so on.

I´m thinking on increasing the number of lands including mishra´s factory and/or mutavault in order to have "creatures to play" without suspend. Another interesting option could be Ashenmoor Gouger, anathemancer or avatar of discord (helps ou to cast most powerful balances).


Please any feedback will be very well received.

[Shanghi Knights]

just a thought but would Contagion have any place in this deck?
it seems good for your discard portion of restore balance on the same principle as for running unmask.

also what about maybe cascading into a bitterblossem?

if you need more discard disruption on a 3 mana curve to avoid interfering with the cascade, i believe last rites would fit in nice. the part in it where you discard from your hand isn't an additional cost to the spell if i'm reading it right. with that said you could knock out most of you opponents hand upon its resolution leaving you with just a cascade card in your hand and them with no counter measures. least that seems better than mindstab