Cascade Ladders

[Cire]

Foreword: yes stupid title, i know, but anything else would be stupider, i had cascade destroy but...well it sucked just as hard.

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In standard for those paying attention right now there is a deck called Cascade swans, it has a pretty consitent turn 4 win and is pretty resistent against the distruption of that format, of course a turn 4 win with no protection in legacy is a bad idea but it did inspire me to fool around with cascade more...

Yes this is another cascade deck, but unlike other ones (my cascade end) and the more popular cascade hyper gensesis this is more of a control deck.

This is a deck i recently put together, it was intended to be a casual deck, but i want to see if it has some other merit... as of now its largely a thought experiment. Everything following the decklist is all theory and is not tested. As soon as I get to test it I will, but its summer vacation and im not in touch with my friends from school.

Anyway the Deck itself

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Cascade Ladders

4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
4 Malestorm Pulse
4 Captured sunlight
4 Deny Reality
2 Bituminous Blast
2 Primal Comand

4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Enlisted Wurm
4 Enigma Sphinx
2 Angel of Despair

4 Wooded foothills
3 Wasteland
3 Polluted Delta
3 Bayoo
3 Scrublands
2 Volcanic island
2 Savanah
2 Swamp

Basicly the deck is pretty simple, starting 2nd turn you hopefully would be able to sinkhole them slowing them down, if not you wait till third turn to vidicate or pulse away their threat...

From then on every cascade spell you play will eventually cascade into a vindicate effect or sinkhole, allowing you to consitently deny your opponent crucial lands or threats. As you go up the cascade ladder so to speak, you will eventually have your own threats on the board while destroying your opponents threats or lands every turn.

its a pretty simple idea, and probably not that competitive, but it is alot of fun to cascade into vindicate after vindicate. The primal comand is their to simply refuel your deck if you run out of pulses/vindicates in it, and it can also mass up their development by returning a non-land pernament to the top of their library.

The deck can also hold up against counterspells and counter-top well simply due to its high curve, many destroy enchantment effects, and if the opponent wishes to counter the vindicate effect he must still allow all the cascade effects to pass and vice versa since cascade triggers from being played not resolving.

Finnally again this deck started as a casual deck so the manabase is probably not perfect, actually pretty sure it can, and must be improved on.

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The deck will understandably be weak against combo decks, thats why against them you can side out the pulses for hymn to torach and similar effects, allowing every spell you play to either destory a crucial land, or mess up their hand.

The sideboard should probably start something like this:

4 Hymn to torach
4 Meddling mage

This means starting turn 2, every turn you will either destroy a permanent (probably a land), have them discard 2 cards at random, or put a meddling mage into play, for any combo deck having to deal with a peice of hate every turn will be back breaking.

or course the manabase needs heavy fixing if we were to include meddling mage, and it would probably be easier to instead put in another combo hoser, but meddling mage is the best combo hoser i can come up with at the moment, maybe a simple duress would be better?

additionally graveyard dependant decks that win fast would also be a problem (ichorid)

so to combat that you may simply include

4 Relic of progentius
3 Tormods Crypt

In the side board. By siding these in game 2, you will basicly be putting out graveyard hate every turn! while the first few turns of the game you will be barely getting by only relying on your constant graveyard hate to avoid dying, youwill eventuall get your own beater into play and win due to constantly raping the graveyard
unforuntaly this thoretical sideboard plan runs into a another of the deck problems; swarms.
Tribal decks should pose a problem to this deck simply because the deck can only take care of one permanent at a time (not including deny reality into vindicate), big swarms of creatures by turn 3 (Merfolk, Slivers & Golbins).

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To fix the above problem, I think theres two directions we can take, the first involves putting in P. Deed in the main deck, replacing some of the pulses/vinidcates. Cascading into deed could be a powerful move against swarm decks, but I doubt its that good, by turn 4 the swarm decks would have overrun you. The second method would be to make room in the sideboard for pyroclasm effects and the like, but I don’t know how much space I can make. In the sideboard. Taking out 1 to 2 graveyard hate should not be that much of a problem but the combo hate need to be a round 7-8, yetr this only leaves us at make 3 extra spots, so im guessing how much you devote your sideboard against this decks big three enimies (combo, swarms, graveyard decks) depends on your meta as always.

Again any help is always welcome.

[Bigface]

Ancestral Vision could be an idea. Not the best spell you could Cascade into, but still it could turn out useful to re-fill your hand.

About Pernicious Deed instead of Maelstrom Pulse. You have no low CC permanents to care about, and 3/4 of times it's better than Pulse. I mean, it's true that swarm decks would have probably beaten your face before you land it, but it can save you in many other occasions, and hits a wider range of stuff (CB, 'Goyf and Mongoose, most of Enchantress stuff, Stax artifacts, basically every piece of Affinity, tokens, Painterstone, and so on).

Also, 4 Enigma Sphynx could be a little too much. They're useful for their Cascade effect, but 7 mana still is a lot to pay. Even if its recursion ability make it quite strong in your deck.

And I can't understand why you play Angel of Despair. Ok, it's a Vinidcate flying beater, but it has the same problem as before: 7 mana. You can't even play it with Enigma Sphynx's Cascade.

My suggestions:

-1 Enigma Sphynx (Overcosted, but let's try keeping 3 in there)
-2 Angel of Despair (Same as before, without recursion, enough Vindicate effects in there)
-2 Maelstrom Pulse (There's room for 2 anyway)
-1 Captured Sunlight (You have enough Cascade Spells)
-1 Deny Realty (Same as before)

+4 Pernicious Deed (Trust me, it deserves its place in here)
+3 Ancestral Vision (Hey, it's like Ancestral Recall - for free!)

[Forbiddian]

Lotus Bloom.

The problem is that the cascade spells really aren't that good cascading into Vindicate. 4 mana for gain 4 life, destroy target permanent isn't even as good as 3 mana destroy target permanent.

You're basically giving up some (a lot of) quality to run extra copies of Vindicate and Maelstrom Pulse (which can't pop lands, making it a dead draw some of the time).


There's a deck in Standard called uh... Cascade Birds or something. You use that 2UW 4/3 flying "When this takes X damage, the controller of the damage source draws X cards."

Anyway, you run tons of cascade into Seismic Assault (only 3cc), and more than half your deck is land, so you start pitching lands to draw more lands and you burn your opponent out.

It's pretty interesting, I was thinking about a Legacy port. It's slow, but it's very resilient to disruption and it costs like $15 total.

[Elfrago]

Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors could hel accelerating into the cascade spells. But probably you have tu cut some color(s) or wasteland to fit them.

[rufus]

There's a deck in Standard called uh... Cascade Birds or something. You use that 2UW 4/3 flying "When this takes X damage, the controller of the damage source draws X cards."

Anyway, you run tons of cascade into Seismic Assault (only 3cc), and more than half your deck is land, so you start pitching lands to draw more lands and you burn your opponent out.

It's pretty interesting, I was thinking about a Legacy port. It's slow, but it's very resilient to disruption and it costs like $15 total.

In Legacy you can just use Chain of Plasma with Swans.

[Forbiddian]

In Legacy you can just use Chain of Plasma with Swans.

Irrelevant.

You have to Chain AFTER resolving Swans, leaving Swans open to removal or a fast burnout. In short, your opponent can Swords the Swans in response to the Chain and you get nothing. Also, you can't really cast Swans on turn 4 because you need mana after Swan in order to get the infinite burn for the win.

With Cascade Swans, the Seismic Assault comes down first. Then, if Swans resolves, you can burn them out in response to their Swords on the Swan.


Not sure it's a good deck, but the shell seems much stronger than that Chain of Plasma crap.

[Cire]

Lotus Bloom.

The problem is that the cascade spells really aren't that good cascading into Vindicate. 4 mana for gain 4 life, destroy target permanent isn't even as good as 3 mana destroy target permanent.

You're basically giving up some (a lot of) quality to run extra copies of Vindicate and Maelstrom Pulse (which can't pop lands, making it a dead draw some of the time).


There's a deck in Standard called uh... Cascade Birds or something. You use that 2UW 4/3 flying "When this takes X damage, the controller of the damage source draws X cards."

Anyway, you run tons of cascade into Seismic Assault (only 3cc), and more than half your deck is land, so you start pitching lands to draw more lands and you burn your opponent out.

It's pretty interesting, I was thinking about a Legacy port. It's slow, but it's very resilient to disruption and it costs like $15 total.

I mentioned Cascade Swans, but i also expressed my opinion that they can't be succefully ported due to you not being able to run protection for a turn 4 combo.

Also im not really giving up quality IMO, i still run 8 vindicate effects, so its not like i would ever play a cascade spell instead of simply playing the vindicate. Basicaly the deck runs on the assumption that a card can't get much better than a vindicate. And if i can get threats with my vindicates thats even better. Again the deck wants to run as much vindicates as possible, because vindicate effects are just that good, the threats, life gain, and bounce are just added benifits to a deck that hope to go 24 land/ 36 vindicate. Obviously this hypothetical deck would lose against swarms and combo, but it could take every threat out one by one, much like this deck is trying to do. Additionally you only really play one spell a turn so the high mana cost of some of the cards isn't really a concern as your not chaining together combos or cantrips, or even saving mana for counters ect.

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@ Bigface:

Those are alot of good points; the only problem with 4 deeds, is then you will cascade into less 4 vindicates decreasing the decks ability to play the mana denial route.

Also the angel is there, for it's vinidicate effect, just in case you want to throw down a threat and absolutley want a vindicate instead of a sinkhole or pulse. Just in case.

Also since you only play one spell a turn really, you don't really need visions, also having another less than 3 CMC spell will decrease your vindicate effects.

Also more cascade = more vindicates so i dont think i run too much.

so if i was to follow your advice i would probably do something like this

-1 Enigma Sphynx
-1 Angel of Despair
-2 Maelstrom Pulse

+2 Pernicious Deed
+1 Wasteland
+1 other land (22 lands isn't enough really)

And intresting idea i just had was maybe run 1 crucible of the worlds to allow wasteland beats?
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@ Elfrago: we run enough land to allow us to reach 4 mana by turn 4 consitently and even 5 mana by turn 5, the 2 mana lands also dont allow us to play a sinkhole a turn early or a vinidcate a turn early. They don't really speed up the deck at all. The only mana accel that could make the cut would be:

Peat Bog
Land
Peat Bog comes into play tapped with two depletion counters on it.
tap, Remove a depletion counter from Peat Bog: Add two black mana to your mana pool. If there are no depletion counters on Peat Bog, sacrifice it.

and even then it would only be useful if it came down 1st turn, thus requiring to run 4. But that makes it a dead draw every other time which is a problem...

[Bigface]

I don't think Swans combo decks are so viable in Legacy as they are in Standard and Extended.
1) Swans still cost 2 W/U W/U. And Seismic Assault still cost RRR. Even though dual lands come to help, a well-placed Wasteland and/or Moon effect can prevent you from playing one of the two pieces of the combo.
2) Swans without Assault is, well, a 4/3 flying creature that cannot block and turns Lightning Bolts (and every other burn spell) into Ancestral Recalls. IMHO it's not so good to play it before having Assault (which, by the way, without Swans is almost useless).
3) It is worse than other combo decks. It takes at least 4 turns to win (as much as Solidarity does, if I recall it right), loses to a well-timed K-Grip, and if you don't have a turn 3 Seismic Assault it takes even longer to win.
Well, its advantage is that it requires only 3 cards (Seismic, Swans and at least one land in hand), so a deck playing it could pack a lot of protection, perhaps played in a UR Fish-like shell.


Back to topic. @Cire: I think you should play Crucible instead of that other land you want to add. Wastelock = savage tech against a lot of decks. Being able to recycle fetches in a 4-color deck is nice too.

[Cire]

I don't think Swans combo decks are so viable in Legacy as they are in Standard and Extended.
1) Swans still cost 2 W/U W/U. And Seismic Assault still cost RRR. Even though dual lands come to help, a well-placed Wasteland and/or Moon effect can prevent you from playing one of the two pieces of the combo.
2) Swans without Assault is, well, a 4/3 flying creature that cannot block and turns Lightning Bolts (and every other burn spell) into Ancestral Recalls. IMHO it's not so good to play it before having Assault (which, by the way, without Swans is almost useless).
3) It is worse than other combo decks. It takes at least 4 turns to win (as much as Solidarity does, if I recall it right), loses to a well-timed K-Grip, and if you don't have a turn 3 Seismic Assault it takes even longer to win.
Well, its advantage is that it requires only 3 cards (Seismic, Swans and at least one land in hand), so a deck playing it could pack a lot of protection, perhaps played in a UR Fish-like shell.


Back to topic. @Cire: I think you should play Crucible instead of that other land you want to add. Wastelock = savage tech against a lot of decks. Being able to recycle fetches in a 4-color deck is nice too.

About swans:

You also need 40 or morelands in your deck to be able to combo off...otherwise you'll at best be simply cycling into one land after another never having enough lands to combo out... thus you have at max only 18-20 cards youll be able to put in your deck... the combo including the search (or cascade spells) takes up around 14-18 cards depending on how you build it, leaving only 6-2 max cards for protection... additionally non of which can be a force of will, unmask, or misdirection simply due to the color constraits of your 18-20 cards, additionally you have to remember you can't do anything for the first 2 turn...overall making it a terrible deck to port over to legacy.

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Lol, back on topic,

Yeah on further thought crucible seams like an excellent choice in the deck, ill implement the following changes

-1 Enigma Sphynx
-1 Angel of Despair
-2 Maelstrom Pulse

+2 Pernicious Deed
+1 Wasteland
+1 Crucible of Worlds

[MULocke]

Yeah, the reason swans is so good in T2 right now is that there are basically zero blue spells in the format. Legacy's metagame is slightly different, in that Force of Will is a card. Thus, going combo is weak (just play a better combo that can run protection). I like the direction the OP went, tho. A Chapin 5cb port would be interesting, at least. Goyf and blue spells is obviously really good already, so why not add bloodbraid elf and some more gas? Jund charm/pyroclasm, vindicate/pulse, etc seem interesting here. The really expensive spells seem weak, as a 6-7 mana spell really needs to just be winning you the game rather than being a 2 or 3 for 1. We have those at three and four mana.

[Cire]

I know its too soon to report any testings, but i just wanted to post the list im playing at moment, some recent findings and my completed side board.

First the list;

Cascade Ladders

4 Bloodbraid Elf
2 Enlisted Wurm
2 Tomb stalkers

4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
4 Malestorm Pulse
4 Hymn to Torach
4 Captured sunlight
4 Deny Reality
4 Bituminous Blast
1 Primal Comand

4 Wooded foothills
4 Wasteland
3 Polluted Delta
3 Bayoo
3 Scrublands
2 Volcanic island
2 Savanah
2 Swamp

the major diffrences are as follows:

Cascade spells; more than 20 cascade spells is simply too much additionally i had to get the curve of the deck down (which everyone told me) so i had to eliminate the sphinxs and halved the wurms. The deck no longer runs 7 mana spells so thants one thing that is important. I also increased the blast count, for cascade purposes, but the 4 damage from blast has proved useful in many situations, additonally the increased number of 5 CMC cascade spells, makes Wurm -> 5CMC -> 4CMC -> vinidcate much more likely.

Tombstalker; wait what? well considering that you'll be cascading into spells ect your graveyard will fill up pretty quickly, making tombstalker a mid game BB 5/5 flyer, allowing you to play other spells. also its one real benifit to the sphinx is that it shows up earlier in the game, allowing you to win faster. The wurm is still takes 2 spots for cascade, but if testing shows me the deck is still too slow to compete the first thing will be to cut two wurms for this.

Hymn; i felt that Hymn strongly belonged in the main deck, this allows you to pretty much play a major peice of distruption turn 2 wither hymn or sinkhole, and cascading into a hymn is still really good, still providing plenty of distruption. The only real problem is that occasionally their might be a moment mid to late game when you desperatly need a vindicate instead of a hymn, but thats a risk i am willing to take

Primal Command: There is still one primal comand in the deck to renew your library just in case. Also setting them back a draw step and threat is a plus.

Wasteland: like all good control decks, the wasteland count need to be 4, also i tried a couple games with crucible in the deck and was disapointed how often i would rather cascade into something else. the wasteland/crucible lock was less than stellar, it could be because i only ran one crucible and should go for 4 instead, but as of now i decided to simply cut it.

Deed: I played 3 games with deed in my deck, and thats all i needed to eliminated it, it was terrible, getting it out 3rd turn was already too late for its intended uses and i hated waiting a full turn to destroy something, i would rather have the pulse in the deck than the deed. Pulse destroys something imediately while with deed you have to wait a full turn. While this deck runs plenty of distruption, it is somehow fundementally diffrent than the rock, making deed pale in comparision in its application in this deck contrary to rock builds

The mana base is proving decent although it could still be largely improved of, starting with more basics to counter opposing wastelands and LD.

Now for my Side Board:

4 Duress
4 Relic of progentius
4 Enginered Plauge
3 Infest/Volcanic fallout
2 Tormods Crypt

Duress: with hymn in the deck, duress is the only combo hate you need in the board, you side out pulse and from then on every cascade spell you play will either destroy their hand or their land. Additionally with 8 hand distruption effects and 8 LD effects alone not including the cascade 'copies', barring a combo nut draw, you have a pretty good chance of srewing up their game plan.

Graveyard hate: as said before, by playing relic and crypt in the deck, graveyard decks will have to deal with almost a peice of removal every turn thanks to cascade. I think against ichorid the correct play will be to side out the hymn's and 2 pulse for the relics and crypts

Versus swarm: agaisnt swarm decks hymn helps alot md, and after board youll have plauge and infest to help you tame the hordes. Even goblins will have a hard time with (what one game led to actually) 4 plauges on the board (actually it was only to plauges, but i continued goldfishing after he quit and the next two turns were, Blast -> Plauge, and Wurm -> Plauge, that made me smile) Infest and plauge are IMO better than deed because they have imediate effect upon being played, which is crucial to what is a slow deck. The reason i put it as infest/volcanic fallout is the following; volcanic fallout is much better than infest, considering that some of this decks worst matchups are merfolk and faeries, but it imposiblt to play it by itself on turn 3, which is possbile with infest, If the mana base could be changed to allow not only a 2nd turn hymn, a 3rd vindicate or pulse but also a 3rd turn fallout than volcanic would take infests place. Till then im sticking with infest.

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edit: an attempt at a mana base that can support a 2nd hymn & a 3rd turn vindicate/pulse/fallout.

4 Wooded Foothills
4 Wasteland
3 Taiga
3 Badlands
2 Plateau
2 Polluted Delta
1 Savanah
1 Underground Sea
1 Swamps
1 Flooded Strand
1 ?

Does it look remotedly plausable? basicly the formula i used was if i was to play a land every turn as well as spell every turn i needed to hit the following color cobinations on any given turn,

1st B (For hymn, sinkhole on turn 2)
2nd B/R (For hymn, sinkhole and a fallout on turn 3)
3rd R/G or (For vindicate or pulse or fallout)
W/R
4th G/W (for bloodbraid elf or captured sunlight, regardless
If you hit the taiga or the scrubland on third turn a
Savannah allows you the following color combination 1GRW
Allowing you to play either card)
5th U (For deny reality)
6th 1 (For Wurm)

if a mana base can hit those colors on thouse turns then it is a pretty good bet. Unfornutely it'll still suffer from non-basic landness so to speak.