BG Braids deck

[Hawdes]

Ok guys, since I've mainly been playing TEES (The Epic Elf Survival), and been feeling that the decks rolls over to some decks that are popular in my meta, I've decided to go for something a little different...

I've been brainstorming around a BG deck, that utilizes cards such as Wasteland, Sinkhole, Hymn etc. to achieve early disruption until I land a Braids, Cabal Minion. My friend played something simular back in the days of legacy, when there were not goyf and such.

I haven't come up with a certain list yet since it's mearly thoughts... Any ideas of what creatures that would fit in here?
I've been thinking of including Eternal Witness for recurrsion, Dark Confidant for card draw, which can be sacced to either therapy or Cabal herself if I run low on life.
But that's as far as I can think... Been looking at Gamekeeper to search for Cabal if I sac him for Therapy... but would this be any good? It might hit random junk instead... So i think that's out of the picture...

Oh, and I have thought of this as a land base.
6-8 fetch
4 Bayou
3 Barren Moor (since we utilize the LftL engine)
4 Wasteland
1 Volrath's Stronghold
some basics
Running a land base of about 20 lands?

Thinking of including Chrome moxes for those sexy Turn 1 Hymn's and Sink holes...

What are your thought's on MTGthesource? I need you :)

[jebus]

Well, I used to play a BW Braids deck on MWS. Stuff you'd probably want in your deck:
Mishra's Factory - since you're recurring lands anyway
Urborg, ToY - because you'd want to run 4 Wastelands and 4 Factories
Mox Diamond > Chrome Mox
Smallpox - cheap LD/discard/removal
Chalice of the Void - singlehandedly wins games

Also, I went with BW because of Vindicate (all-purpose removal which doubles as LD) and Ghostly Prison, and I had Crucibles for land recursion. Green gives you LftL, which, granted, is better than Crucible, but after that you have... Pernicious Deed? and... Eternal Witness? What other G or BG stuff are you planning to run?

EDIT: also, you'd want to run A LOT more than 20 lands, even with recursion. At least 22, with LftL. 24+, with Crucible. Braids messes your mana base up to, especially if you can't get your engine online.

[AngryTroll]

Kitchen Finks should be in the deck for sure as a speedbump for Aggro and the synergy with Braids. Bitterblossom also makes Braids onesided, and is awesome by itself.

[Hanni]

I attempted Braids Stax a long while back... like a year or so ago I think? I don't remember. Anyways, this is the deck I still have on my MWS:

// Lands
4 [ON] Bloodstained Mire
1 [ON] Polluted Delta
8 [6E] Swamp (2)
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
2 [EX] City of Traitors
4 [TE] Wasteland
3 [AQ] Mishra's Factory (4)

// Creatures
4 [OD] Braids, Cabal Minion

// Spells
4 [4E] Dark Ritual
3 [MOR] Bitterblossom
3 [TSP] Smallpox
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
4 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [US] Smokestack
4 [10E] Crucible of Worlds
1 [OD] Haunting Echoes
3 [PLC] Damnation

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [OD] Haunting Echoes
SB: 4 [7E] Duress
SB: 3 [FD] Engineered Explosives
SB: 3 [SOK] Pithing Needle
SB: 4 [PLC] Extirpate

(The decklist above is old and outdated. I can see from just looking at it that it can use a bit of fixing. Still, since there was no list posted yet, I think this is a good shell to work from.)

That can give you a base to work off of. Tweak it to your liking.

EDIT: I tweaked up the maindeck a little to what I think would be an improvement over what I posted, here's what that looks like:

// Lands
4 [ON] Bloodstained Mire
8 [10E] Swamp (2)
2 [PLC] Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [EX] City of Traitors
4 [TE] Wasteland

// Creatures
4 [OD] Braids, Cabal Minion

// Spells
2 [M10] Haunting Echoes
4 [MOR] Bitterblossom
4 [TSP] Smallpox
4 [PLC] Damnation
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
4 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [US] Smokestack
4 [10E] Crucible of Worlds

[Hawdes]

Well, I used to play a BW Braids deck on MWS. Stuff you'd probably want in your deck:
Mishra's Factory - since you're recurring lands anyway
Urborg, ToY - because you'd want to run 4 Wastelands and 4 Factories
Mox Diamond > Chrome Mox
Smallpox - cheap LD/discard/removal
Chalice of the Void - singlehandedly wins games

Also, I went with BW because of Vindicate (all-purpose removal which doubles as LD) and Ghostly Prison, and I had Crucibles for land recursion. Green gives you LftL, which, granted, is better than Crucible, but after that you have... Pernicious Deed? and... Eternal Witness? What other G or BG stuff are you planning to run?

EDIT: also, you'd want to run A LOT more than 20 lands, even with recursion. At least 22, with LftL. 24+, with Crucible. Braids messes your mana base up to, especially if you can't get your engine online.

Thanks for the replies everyone...
The take on BG could be pretty ok if Maelstrom Pulse would be used instead of the vindicate. Although it doesn't get lands, but it might be worth a shot.
The main reason for running green is it's great way in recurring cards. I've always loved Eternal Witness and LftL just seems so nice with the inclusion of wastelands.
What about running living wish? It might work in this kind of deck that's mainly built around lands and to get Braids into play?

If I would run Chalice, then I would want to include lands like Ancient tomb to hit a turn one Chalice on one. But using Chalice will make cards at cmc 1 and 2 pretty useless from my side.
Better to use chalice than destroying lands with i.e Sink hole or rape their hand with Hymn?

I will take into account all the hints i got from these replies and I will post a list shortly after some testing with my mates.

[jebus]

My version was pretty heavy on LD, so Vindicate was an essential card. Going with a GB Stax-ish build with LftL and Maelstrom Pulse would also work out, I guess.

Chalice was used with Mox Diamonds to cut off just 1cc spells. It worked well enough with all the LD and discard. I think the list was along the lines of:

4 Fetch
4 Scrubland
6 Swamp
3 Urborg, ToY
4 Factory
4 Wasteland
4 Mox Diamond
3 Crucible of Worlds

4 Braids
4 Chalice
2 Ghostly Prison

2 Rancid Earth
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
4 Smallpox
4 Hymn to Tourach

Something like that. The Rancid Earths could have been removal of some sort. Anyway, it was great when it worked, sometimes it was a bit too slow though.

[Hawdes]

Ok guys, I've been testing two different decks against Tempothresh, Merfolk and a Zoo deck. It didn't go that well though...
This is what I've been testing:

B/G Braids
4 Bayou
4 Windswept Heath (or new B/G fetch from Zendi)
4 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Barren Moor
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Swamp
1 Volrath's Stronghold

3 Braids, Cabal Minion
3 Eternal Witness
4 Dark Confidant
3 Kitchen Finks
4 Tarmogoyf

4 Sinkhole
4 Hymn to Tourach
2 Cabal Therapy
2 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond
3 Duress

No board at the moment

Braids Staxx

4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Wasteland
3 Mishra's Factory
4 Swamp

3 Braids, Cabal Minion
1 Nether Spirit

4 Bitterblossom (killed me a couple of times...)
4 Mox Diamond
1 Haunting Echoes
3 Smallpox
3 Damnation
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
4 Smokestack
4 Crucible of Worlds

No board.

The decks performed kind of differently... I felt that the BG version had a lot more going and played fairly stable without hitting a "Braids lock". But on the other had, the Staxx variant won more games to a Chalice at one (Against tempo thresh) than the BG deck did. The worst part with the Staxx variant is that it takes forever to actually win by beatdown.
Playing the BG version a couple of times, I noticed more explosive starts into turn 1 hymn with daze backup (if I hit 2 moxes) but most of the time, they were too slow and the cards didn't pull their weight.

The decks need to be reworked somehow, to either get faster (which I think isn't possible) or to be more concistent... Either way, I got stomped most of the time by the decks I was playing against... In theory, a BG Braids deck that plays like a rock deck but with a stable "finisher" in Braids, should stomp various blue decks. But tempo thresh is just too damn efficient...

Since black and green lacks any good 1 drops (except from discard in Duress/Cabal therapy/Thoughtseize) it seems like you're pretty screwed either way if you're on the draw.
Playing around daze makes the deck a lot slower than it already is, and you'll have to force your spells due to the fact that either your spells get Dazed/Spell Snared or even FoW:ed... If they counter your card drawing engines after going all in, despite the fact that you're daze safe, you loose too much gas for the game to even continue. Their beats are just too fat for you to handle, mongoose dies to Mishra's ofc, but since they have counterbackup, it's pretty hard to resolve anything else.

I've tried playing it slow, I've tried playing around daze, I've tried all in and every single strategy I could think of... Baiting for counters to resolve houses like Goyf and Confidants to get new gas or even try to resolve witness to chain back into my Hymns and sinks... The triggered ability of Witness ended up being stifled most of the times which made my head explode after some serious 20-30 games against tempo thresh...
I know that you need to keep your head cool and all, but it's so frustrating playing against a deck (note to self: a good and efficient deck) that you just simply sucombe to the fact that blue is a must these days...

Any thoughts people? I'm simply out of ideas of how to make these decks any good against those decks. Not to talk about Zoo's efficient creatures that just wreck mine...

[Hanni]

The point of the Stax variant is that it's very consistent. Braids/Smokestack give you 8 permanent sac'ers so that you consistently see that effect. Bitterblossom/Crucible give you 8 recurring permanent effects so that you consistently break the symmetry of Braids/Smokestack.

You don't need to be aggressive with damage early on. You just need to assemble the lock. Once the opponent is shut out of the game, it's very easy to finish things off.

Bitterblossom shouldn't be killing you. It chump blocks Goyfs and such so that you actually take less damage early, and it creates a ton of tokens so that you should be racing your opponent late. Not to mention that you have 8 ways to destroy your own Bitterblossom should the pain get too excessive for you.

In the B/G rock-style version, I'd be tempted to try Magus of the Abyss over Braids. You cannot sac your other non-creature permanents, but it's 4/3 body is more aggressive than Braids 2/2 body.

[Hawdes]

The point of the Stax variant is that it's very consistent. Braids/Smokestack give you 8 permanent sac'ers so that you consistently see that effect. Bitterblossom/Crucible give you 8 recurring permanent effects so that you consistently break the symmetry of Braids/Smokestack.

You don't need to be aggressive with damage early on. You just need to assemble the lock. Once the opponent is shut out of the game, it's very easy to finish things off.

Bitterblossom shouldn't be killing you. It chump blocks Goyfs and such so that you actually take less damage early, and it creates a ton of tokens so that you should be racing your opponent late. Not to mention that you have 8 ways to destroy your own Bitterblossom should the pain get too excessive for you.

In the B/G rock-style version, I'd be tempted to try Magus of the Abyss over Braids. You cannot sac your other non-creature permanents, but it's 4/3 body is more aggressive than Braids 2/2 body.

The main thing I was experienceing when piloting the staxx deck was that I was shut out fram the game more often than I established the lock.
The tempothresh player always had beats out before I even stabilized with any sort of sweeper or when I hit the lock of smokestack/braids.
When I established this lock, I was already down at 3-14 life. Remember, ancient tomb and fetches damage me aswell. So does opposing creatures.

In the BG version, you say that I can't sac non-creature permanents, that's not what I've felt... I kept sacing lands with the LftL engine. Once I hit 3-4 lands and have some moxes out, it's easy to play cards and keep the lock down. And if I need to sac a creature, I would always sac a finks to let it persist, and then sac it again to return it on top of my lib with Volrath's. It's not science.
The problem is to get there... I've hardly ever established a nice lock by turn 2-4 with either of the decks since it's almost impossible to get anything through, even with baiting. And when it does come through, the beats would've almost killed me.

[Hanni]

In the BG version, you say that I can't sac non-creature permanents, that's not what I've felt...

I meant with Magus of the Abyss.

[Tog]

With Entomb now legal, I would suggest putting Entomb + 2 Nether Spirit in to the deck. You can also have other Flashback/Incarnation/Retrace bullets. Just a thought!

- Tog

[Moonlight]

Hey,

Maybe with braids, damnation and cabal T, oversold cemetery is worth looking at?
And 4 Dark Confidant + 3(?) SDTop sounds fun too..?

Goodluck with your ideas ;)

Greetings,

Moonlight