[idea] mindslaver lock

[thatoneguy]

I want to play a lock deck, and stax is a little out of my price range (when i say a little, i mean a lot). So i thought maybe mindslaver, but i need loads of help with this.
I was thinking green blue, green to ramp into enough mana to use a prototype portal and mindslaver each turn. This takes ten mana each turn, and that is a lot of mana. I thought about using the Urza lands to help, along with some of the ramping spells that have been big in standard. Would Genisis wave help also? It would alow me to put permanents into play, but it may be a wasted space. Blue would be for tutoring, like fabricate, or if anyone has a better idea, i am all ears.
This may be a bad idea, if it is, i may just forget about it. On the other hand, if it has hope of being ok, i would love to try it.
Any ideas?

[Xiang]

I think this is more something for the casual forum. In a normal legacy meta mindslaver lock suffers two main problems:
1. It's really slow.
2. The non-standard lands you use to power out mind slaver fall easily to wasteland.

This leads to the point that mind slaver is only playable in a deck like 43 lands, which can recover it's resources with life from the loam and packs heavy mana denial in form of 4x wastelands(recurring) and 4x ports in addition to ramping with exploration and manabond. The problem is that lands is as expansive as staxx if not more expansive.

If you want to play min slaver casually I woul recommend a u/g version based on cloudpost/vesuva or urza-tron and gifts ungiven/intuiton for tutoring slaver, acaemy ruins, life from the loam (+x). Might be worth to run prophetic prism for mana fixing and a few cycling lands.

something like these old extended decks:

http://www.deckcheck.org/?x=8QRflGWV2M4iF31hlGRfvdvd75iaia
http://www.deckcheck.org/?x=8QRflGWV2M4iF31hlGRf75N4y8c7y8

[Rock Lee]

I would be highly speculative of people who demand that your slaver lock is a casual-only concept. Such thinking is simply narrow minded. Cloudposts and Urza-like mana bases have been placing highly in events recently simply by strong deckbuilders taking advantage of metagame weaknesses caused specifically by said narrow minded pundits.

There are two forms I would suggest you take this deck concept. A fully basic landbase or a fully nonbasic. I would not try to mix and match as the wastes will simply find their way into your weak areas.

Legacy is a format of wastelands, but it doesn't mean you can dismiss entirely or saturated nonbasic landbases. Generally people approach what is considered a weakness of an excessive nonbasic landbase with two polar theories: Quick efficient tempo push (Threshold) or redundancy ad nauseum (Bomholt.dec (http://www.quietspeculation.com/2011/02/slinging-mud-2nd-place-at-scg-indy/) and Turbo-drazi (http://www.tipo1.it/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22224).) Both strategies (2 tapping lands, Metalworker, and Crucible OR Cloudposts) have their strengths and weaknesses, but provide you with an excess of mana necessary to perform a 10 mana lock.

Welder in Bomholt's decklist would provide non-prototype portal recursion until you could set up a lock. Thirst in the Turbo-Drazi decklist would provide you with smoothing and a discard outlet. You could also attempt to meet halfway by running U/R Turbo-Drazi or splash Blue into Bomholt.dec. Neither of those ideas do I suggest strongly but over anything I encourage innovation.

If you're looking to make a budget deck that will be competitive then list what kind of cardpool you have accessable. I would warn though, that if you're looking to make a competitive list with an unorthodox concept, you often have to venture into less thrifty waters.

A basic landbase would require running both mass removal and pinpoint removal, which is going to be difficult in a basic landbase, but is by all means possible. (Think blue/white moat type decks with 4x Flooded Strand, 4x Wrath of God, 4x Swords to Plowshares or blue/black Psychatog type decks, 4x Polluted Delta, 4x Damnation, 4x Ghastly demise). This is the kind of deck you can throw AK-Intuition into and get away with it. Intuition could also serve as a strong option for tutoring slaver or other other artifact monsters.

Come back with what your price range and card pool are

[thatoneguy]

I am willing to spend about $150 to $200 dollars, and my card pool is limited. I don't have very many good cards to choose from considering i started playing in Alara block. I think blue white could be good, like you said above, but if i use blue white, would i need to draw a land a turn to reach the 10 mana for the lock? This would mean i would need to have both slaver, and prototype portal in hand, along with protection from disruption?

[Rock Lee]

I am willing to spend about $150 to $200 dollars, and my card pool is limited. I don't have very many good cards to choose from considering i started playing in Alara block. I think blue white could be good, like you said above, but if i use blue white, would i need to draw a land a turn to reach the 10 mana for the lock? This would mean i would need to have both slaver, and prototype portal in hand, along with protection from disruption?

Indeedly. If you're looking at a control build you would indeed need to build up to 10 with protection, or even worse 14 so you could immediately slave someone. Its an auspicious goal. One of the reasons I enjoy the Cloudpost manabase is that it is extremely inexpensive. You could play mono blue and buy the entire landbase for 10 dollars total, with most of that being 4x Vesuva. Without candelabras your mana base will be weaker than normal, but it means you're less vulnerable to Engineered Explosives and Pithing Needle.

I would run something that lets you use your astronomically large amount of mana also. I strongly suggest All is Dust as the best board sweeper in the game period, but it is entirely not required. Spell Burst and Repeal are also strong and extremely inexpensive control cards. Vedalken Shackles are another great colorless sink if you're running heavy islands. You have me intrigued by this deck now, so I'll write up a brief list and come back with it. I've always had a strong passion for mono blue control, and MUC always had copious usage for coloreless.

Here's the list I whipped up that would give you a strong economically costed competitive Mono Blue Control (MUC) Prototype Portal list: I even gave it a great name! Mono Blue Control is "MUC" but what do you get when you have MUC with lots of mana? That's right "Landslide"



// Lands
4 [MR] Cloudpost
4 [TSP] Vesuva
4 [SOM] Glimmerpost
10 [M10] Island (4)
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins

// Spells
4 [TSP] Spell Burst
4 [GP] Repeal
4 [ROE] All Is Dust
4 [ZEN] Expedition Map
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [DDF] Thirst for Knowledge
4 [V09] Sensei's Divining Top
3 [SOM] Prototype Portal
3 [MR] Mindslaver
3 [FD] Vedalken Shackles

Thirst and Fact or Fiction can be alternated depending on how strongly you feel about it. Currently you run a rather low blue count, so I could understand going down 1 Top, 1 Portal, 1 Slaver, 1 Shackles and adding 4 Fact or Fiction.

The only Spendy cards in there at the moment are Force of Wills (required for any blue deck, but 40$ apiece), All is Dust (10$ apiece), Sensei's Divining Top (9$ apiece) and Vedalken Shackles (8$ apiece). If you already have these three cards it wouldn't cost you more than 20 dollars to fill out the rest.

Some quick tricks you may already be aware of. With Sensei's divining Top you turn Prototype Portal into a library of alexandria, drawing one card a turn. You can also make an incredibly annoying amount of Vedalken Shackles. Lastly, you can thin and get free shuffles out of portal expedition maps. Its a little tragic that Candelabra of Tawnos are upto 65$ apiece and rising, because they would make an incredibly hilarious addition to this deck.

This is all highly theoretical though with zero playtesting, just guttural feelings about good cards in good situations that make for frowny opponents. I would strongly suggest proxying up and playing anything before you buy any cards at all, maybe excepting force of wills. Good Luck and let me know how it turns out for you! (I might try it myself too, this sounds like a schadenfreude feast)

:EDIT: I just realized this deck has no win condition outside of decking your opponent with infinite turns and academy ruins or killing them with their own guys with your infinite Vedalken Shackles. Granted, most decks run guys, and you have infinite turns to make them play them. I find that rather hilarious in its own right, but for sanity sake I could understand you running some artifact fatty as an "alternate" win condition. Reaper King for maximum hilarity with Prototype Portal, but I think Platinum Emperion, Platinum Angel, or Sundering Titan could just be stronger.

::EDITx2:: For an initial economical sideboard, I would go with this:

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [TE] Propaganda
SB: 4 [AQ] Energy Flux
SB: 3 [ZEN] Mindbreak Trap
SB: 4 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
Although I think Pithing Needle x4 would be ultimately stronger than x4 Relic. Needles are spendy however (::EDITx3::wow I'm old, apparently needles are down to 4$ apiece, scratch that needles ahoy!), and I think it would be incredible to win an event with a deck that cost less total than some people's individual lands (FBB duals/Tabernacles)

::EDITx4:: Ok, last edit I swear. If you wished to make this deck more competitive and significantly less frugal, I would suggest picking up 4x Candelabra of Tawnos and 3x Fact or Fiction, while dropping 4x Expedition map, 1x Spell Burst, 1x Prototype Portal, and 1x Mindslaver. Also I would swap 1 island for 1 Academy Ruins regardless. There is no joy like countering Shattering spree and each of the 4 copies with spell burst. Enjoy! Let me know how your testing goes.

[Rock Lee]

So I did some testing, and while prototype seems to have tons of great potential in a world without removal, I often found it pitched to TFK more than anything and was quite clunky. Academy ruins was just so much easier and just as sustainable. It also lets you be immune to decking, which can be an issue with such an absurd amount of draw.

I've been playing the list with 4x candelabra, and it is hilarious. It has my two favorite cards ever, Mindslaver and Vedalken Shackles, and with infinite mana now Spell Burst. I still think some of my other decks are more competitive, but this deck is absolutely hilarious and fun to play while still trouncing people.

[thatoneguy]

I will give this a try when i can get it all together! I never thought much on removal, but the blue seems to look good, could force of will be substituted? I know its the best, but at $40 a piece, =/. Im glad its fun, i haven't looked let, but how does that mana base work?

[Rock Lee]

I will give this a try when i can get it all together! I never thought much on removal, but the blue seems to look good, could force of will be substituted? I know its the best, but at $40 a piece, =/. Im glad its fun, i haven't looked let, but how does that mana base work?

There are always substitutes, but with force of will the other options severely hinder your competitiveness. If you plan to play blue in legacy competitively, force of wills are your best investment possible. Don't be pressured by me though, ask around. =D