[SCD] Scroll Rack

[Sigar]

Did anyone else toy around with this card combined with miracle cards?

I have for a bit, and although I haven't come up with the perfect list yet, I can say that Scroll Rack is the real deal.

I have lost so many games due to dead miracles in hand and no sight of a Brainstorm. Jace is very hard to resolve when the format is filled with Pierce, Daze, Wasteland, Thalia, etc., so you can't count on him as a reliable solution. Therefor I tried out Scroll Rack, and I haven't looked back since.

Besides being great with Counterbalance in conjunction with Sensei's Divining Top, I could also imagine trying it out with Life from the Loam as well, since it turns Scroll Rack into Ancestral Recall.

What are your experiences with the card? And what kind of list are you working with? Any other cards that "combo" well with it?

[RJM]

Did anyone else toy around with this card combined with miracle cards?


There's a reason it jumped to $40 overnight. People speculating and trying it in lists with Miracle cards.

Worth it? I've had mixed results so far.

[alderon666]

Play Scroll Rack, -1 card and -2 mana.

Activate Scroll Rack, switch bad cards for other bad card on top, -1 mana. 3 manas that got you nowhere. Obvously worst case scenario.

Top is just so superior overall, I just dislike this card. Having to have cards in hand to actually do something could actually be a problem too. Not being able to cash it in at will like Top, for me is just a dealbreaker.

I suppose you just need to test it.

[Sigar]

You can't compare it to Top, cause the cards do two completely different things. Top can't get rid of dead miracles in hand, which is Scroll Rack's primary function. Being abusable with cards like Life from the Loam, just makes the card even more interesting.

If you see the cards in a vacuum, Top obviously looks better on paper, but that's like comparing Goblin Matron to Demonic Tutor. On the surface the cards kind of do the same thing, but in reality they don't.

[Final Fortune]

If you're playing Temporal Mastery and Terminus then I think you should be playing Squadron Hawk instead of Life from the Loam for the draw engine, it's pretty solid fwiw.

[Finn]

I don't there us room for two mana-intensive (two to cast on your main phase and one for each activation is mana intensive in Legacy) card advantage engines in Legacy. So, I would not use Life from the Loam with Scroll Rack. However, I have already tried a blue/white control deck with hawks and lots of miracles. I am sure many others have also done this. You really run out of space in this design, and I suspect that this is a big reason it has not been successful yet. Blue is powerful, but does not leave much room for both creativity and sufficient wincons if you are building the deck properly. And miracles, for all their power, need some serious design real estate to make them consistent.

Even with hawks as a sorta wincon, I was never satisfied with the speed of the deck. Frankly, Temporal Mastery and Terminus don't really play well together. I think miracles will be important in Legacy some day not so far off. But it will take a design that goes against convention to get them there. I also think that Scroll Rack is as likely as any card to make it into such a deck.

[Tacosnape]

I'll oversimplify this - Scroll Rack is a card that belongs in nonblue miracle decks.

Got a friend who plays Red/White control in Legacy with Scroll Rack, Terminus, Entreat, and Bonfire (It also includes Top, Ajani Vengeant, and a bunch of other goofy cards.) Not saying the deck's really that hardcore, but in that sort of build, Scroll Rack's a pretty real thing.

In UW Miracles, though, it's competing for spots with Brainstorm and Jace, The Mind Sculptor. While it might snag a spot alongside these behemoth cards in some builds, Brainstorm and Jace are just better for hiding miracle cards - They may not do it as effectively as Scroll Rack sometimes, but they're just better cards that usually do it just as well.

If Land Tax ever got unbanned, Mono White Miracle Tax-Rack would be a real deck. Of course, I'd probably impatience rage-quit Legacy at this point, because any deck running Tax, Top, and Scroll Rack would just be the most grindy unfun thing to play against. Nothing like your opponent taking 8 minutes to not really do anything.

EDIT - MWC could actually be a real deck now with just Top and Rack, but it'll run into the same problem it always does - Lack of draw.

[DragoFireheart]

EDIT - MWC could actually be a real deck now with just Top and Rack, but it'll run into the same problem it always does - Lack of draw.

- Beyond Jace, what card draw does blue have over white?

If you say Brainstorm, 1,000 ghosts from hell shall haunt your dreams and cause you to commit suicide.

[Tacosnape]

Brainstorm. Bring on your ghosts.

While I'm aware you don't actually produce extra cards off Brainstorm, it's still far more efficient of a hand manipulator than anything white has, and playing one Brainstorm for one mana usually puts you in a position where you're much better equipped to control any situation at hand.

Blue does HAVE other draw, though. Legacy got where the draw wasn't needed as much as the speedy hand manipulation Brainstorm provided. But back in the day? Standstill and Ancestral Visions were things.

[Hanni]

EDIT - MWC could actually be a real deck now with just Top and Rack, but it'll run into the same problem it always does - Lack of draw.

Scrying Sheets.

[DragoFireheart]

Brainstorm. Bring on your ghosts.

I hate you so much. :tongue:



While I'm aware you don't actually produce extra cards off Brainstorm, it's still far more efficient of a hand manipulator than anything white has, and playing one Brainstorm for one mana usually puts you in a position where you're much better equipped to control any situation at hand.

Blue does HAVE other draw, though. Legacy got where the draw wasn't needed as much as the speedy hand manipulation Brainstorm provided. But back in the day? Standstill and Ancestral Visions were things.

- *Looks at Hanni*




Scrying Sheets.

Stop trolling me IBA. :laugh:

[Snap_Keep]

Not to be inflammatory for the sake of it, but, wow, I think that post literally had zero content and contributed less than nothing. That might have been the worst non-troll post I've ever seen on a forum.... was there a point to any of that at all?

My thoughts on Scroll Rack are mostly that the card is really good in a dedicated miracle deck. I think as long as people are only trying miracles in their U/W control decks, Scroll Rack will be unneeded with all the Jaces the deck plays. If we ever see a RWU/RUG Miracle deck with 10-12+ miracles then Scroll Rack seems much better, whether or not this sort of deck can ever be good is gonna be reliant on people actually brewing it and playing it.

[Final Fortune]

Jace is more of a win condition in and of itself than an outlet for miracles, where Scroll Rack lets you either move ahead with Temporal Mastery or stabilize with Terminus on crucial turns facing disruption. Scroll Rack isn't a 4x, but as a 1x it's going to smoothe out your deck and get you where you want to be before you can afford to play Jace.

[Tacosnape]

Jace is really two win conditions - The actual fatesealing one, or the irrecoverable game state that Jace leads you to by brainstorming every turn. Against a lot of decks, using fateseal isn't necessary once you stick a Jace on a stable board. You just crush them by looking at 4 and keeping 2 every turn to their 1. And in a Miracle build, especially one running Entreat The Angels, this seems like it'd be the favorable route to take as long as you're not trying to keep them off of a specific card you can't deal with regardless of your card advantage.

But I sort of agree with the last point. I can see a couple Scroll Racks getting a place in a miracle-heavy deck.

[NiRVeS]

Got a friend who plays Red/White control in Legacy with Scroll Rack, Terminus, Entreat, and Bonfire (It also includes Top, Ajani Vengeant, and a bunch of other goofy cards.) Not saying the deck's really that hardcore, but in that sort of build, Scroll Rack's a pretty real thing. Just to throw a list out in the world ; I piloted the follow 60/15 to a 5-2 into 9th place (on tiebreakers) of a recent 70-player tournament.

3 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Scroll Rack
2 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Isochron Scepter
1 Moat
1 Humility
1 Oblivion Ring

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Enlightened Tutor
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Lightning Helix
3 Orim's Chant
3 Terminus

2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Ajani Vengeant
1 Entreat the Angels
1 Batterskull
2 Eternal Dragon

4 Plateau
4 Arid Mesa
4 Marsh Flats
6 Plains
2 Mountain
1 Ancient Den
1 Great Furnace
1 Karakas

SB:
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Red Elemental Blast
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Cursed Totem
3 Blood Moon

The scroll rack performed very well. I like the idea of adding more racks and putting some more Entreats / maybe a Bonfire in there. So I think the card definitely could see some play in miracle-heavy control decks.

Some more blurbs about the list, in case anyone cares:
- Ajani was rancid so I'd cut those.
- Humility was bananas. It's sad that it interacts so badly with Entreat but it just wins you games on it's own against some of the big decks.
- Moat has become pretty unimpressive in a format full of Delvers, Griselbrands and Emrakuls. Probably not worth the inclusion.
- The matchup against stormcombo is bad, so maybe a good bullet against them could be of use.
- Arid Mesa into Plateau to cast SDT, will cause many frowns. It's cool to see people squirm because they have no clue what to expect from you deck.

I haven't touched the list since that one tournament, because I'm curently playing UW Miracles instead. But the WR brew above was a lot of fun, so I could surely recommend it (although I suspect the list still needs a lot of work to actually become competitive).

Grtz,

Tom

[dahcmai]

Heh, I have something similar. Great Minds think alike I guess. I was using Koth and Rolling Earthquakes though, but quite similar for the rest.


This is a good example of a deck that can use a scroll Rack though. I use 3, but I was more or less waiting on tax to make it's comeback. : / The deck would rock if it was back.

[NiRVeS]

Calling me a great mind... I guess we never met did we? But hey, I'll take it :).

Anyway: yeah, whenever I had scroll rack online, I wished I had acces to Land Tax. The scepters did give you something to do with your mana though, so that way it was easier to accumulate some extra cards to rack away.
I WILL add, howver, that this (style of) deck demonstrates why Land Tax might prove problematic: the deck is already slow as it is and uses a lot of operational time (topping, fetching, ...), and every time you scroll rack with 3+ cards in hand, you start consuming some more time as well. I'm pretty sure that adding land tax, in conjunction with Rack, might cause problems in that regard.

@Whoever-suggested-Loam+Scroll-Rack, though: beware the path that takes you. I once played the Loam-Rack deck designed by Adrian Sullivan (the official name was "Gitmo", list can be found on SCG) and that deck was:
1) Mind-bogglingly difficult to play correctly. With the constant moving of cards between hand-grave-library + the dredge mechanic + stacking your deck with Jotun Grunt to prepare for your end game...that are A LOT of moving pieces to keep track of.
2) Waaaaaaay to durdly (to use a popular term) for modern day Legacy.

But maybe the acces to a faster wincon in the form of Entreat the Angels might facilitate all of this a bit though, so I'm interested to see the result when anyone does try it.

Grtz

Tom

[DragoFireheart]

Jace is really two win conditions - The actual fatesealing one, or the irrecoverable game state that Jace leads you to by brainstorming every turn. Against a lot of decks, using fateseal isn't necessary once you stick a Jace on a stable board. You just crush them by looking at 4 and keeping 2 every turn to their 1. And in a Miracle build, especially one running Entreat The Angels, this seems like it'd be the favorable route to take as long as you're not trying to keep them off of a specific card you can't deal with regardless of your card advantage.

But I sort of agree with the last point. I can see a couple Scroll Racks getting a place in a miracle-heavy deck.

- I don't see the room for miracle builds. They also tend to run CounterTop since it fixes their bad matchups (burn, storm, etc).

Most lists I have seen are pretty tight. What would I take out for Scroll Racks?

[Arsenal]

If Land Tax ever got unbanned, Mono White Miracle Tax-Rack would be a real deck. Of course, I'd probably impatience rage-quit Legacy at this point, because any deck running Tax, Top, and Scroll Rack would just be the most grindy unfun thing to play against. Nothing like your opponent taking 8 minutes to not really do anything.

Tacosnape, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts now that Land Tax has been unbanned.

[DragoFireheart]

Tacosnape, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts now that Land Tax has been unbanned.

I am as well. How good is Tax/Scroll? If it's potent enough, is it worth putting in Miracle Control? What other decks can use Tax/Scroll?

[Aggro_zombies]

I am as well. How good is Tax/Scroll? If it's potent enough, is it worth putting in Miracle Control? What other decks can use Tax/Scroll?
It seems worse in almost every way than Jace TMS. The only way in which it's better is that it can go in mono-white while JTMS can't - although that's more an argument against playing mono-white than anything.

The biggest problem with it is that, in order to work, it requires you to be behind on mana and then stay behind on mana. I guess this is fine if you run Mox Diamonds, but even then it's not a good combo on the play or if you don't get an early Mox Diamond to compensate for needing to be one land behind the opponent at all times. There's also the unfortunate fact that many decks in Legacy don't need a whole lot of lands to begin with, which means you'll have to stop playing lands at some point or else your Tax turns off and then Scroll Rack reverts to being borderline useful.

I guess I could see it in a two-color control deck, but the second color in that deck is overwhelmingly likely to be blue, and since JTMS still cost 2UU the last time I checked, there's not a whole lot of need to run Scroll-Tax. I could see running a Tax or two in a control deck without Scroll, but that's another issue.

[alphastryk]

I am as well. How good is Tax/Scroll? If it's potent enough, is it worth putting in Miracle Control? What other decks can use Tax/Scroll?

Miracle control is certainly the most obvious starting point, but tax can really mess with manabases. Need to find room for Mox Diamond.

[hi-val]

Terminus costing a whopping W when Miracled is awesome.

Other advantages over Jace: less succeptible to Spell Pierce/Thalia, can't attack to kill it, you see 3 new cards each turn instead of a Brainstorm.

[Koby]

I can appreciate the immense card advantage offered by Scroll Rack paired with Land Tax. I wonder, however, if the length of turns required to set this combo up is any more efficient than just playing Jace TMS and activating +0. Or if this deck would be able to answer the push from the metagame towards a fundamental turn 3.

[ReinVos]

Looks like Scroll Rack would be best in a Enlightened Tutor package. A Land Tax control deck seems viable but you don't want to max out on both Land Tax and Scroll Rack. You could play them as 2-ofs and a small Enlightened Toolbox (Humility and stuff). That way you can play to interact with your opponent first, before thinking of assembling the engine.