WR Seismic Tax

[rev]

With the unbanning of land tax, it brought back memories of high school:

Creatures (6)
3x Silver Knight
3x Soltari Priest

Enchantments (11)
4x Land Tax
3x Empyrial Armor
2x Seismic Assault
1x Land's Edge
1x Solitary Confinement

Artifacts (9)
4x Mox Diamond
2x Scroll Rack
1x Elixir of Immortality
1x Lotus Petal
1x Zuran Orb

Instants (11)
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Path to Exile
3x Enlightened Tutor

Sorceries (5)
4x Devastating Dreams
1x Gamble

Land (18)
4x Plateau
2x Undiscovered Paradise
5x Mountain
7x Plains

Lots of synergy going on:
- T1 Mox Diamond into Land Tax usually leads to guarenteed trigger.
- Land Tax + Scroll Rack gives hand-shaping.
- Land Tax + Empyrial effects makes fatties.
- Land Tax + Seismic Assault or Firestorm = sport removal or DD to opponents face.
- Pro-red critters deal with the splash-red removals (i.e. lightning bolt).
- Path to Exile either sets you up for land tax trigger or a one-drop removal with no consequence. Seems pretty win to me.
- Academy Rector helps slip Seismic Assault, Empyrial Armor, or Land Tax into play to avoid countering.

Did some play testing with it tonight and it was quite fun, not quite Tier1 material, but it was lots of fun.

Changes from 1.0 > 1.1:
-1 Silver Knight
-1 Soltari Priest
-2 Academy Rector
-1 Empyrial Plate
-1 Firestorm
-1 Lightning Helix
+1 Solitary Confinement
+1 Elixir of Immortality
+1 Lotus Petal
+1 Zuran Orb
+1 Enlightened Tutor
+1 Gamble
+4 Devastating Dreams
Adjusted the mana base

I left the creatures in because I like it as an alternative win condition and because they live through Devastating Dreams. Devastating Dreams was added because it just goes well with the theme of the deck. It 'geddons and clears the board of creatures. The Lotus Petal will probably turn into a Chrome Mox, and gamble is a fun card. The Elixir of Immortality is a great way to get all my lands back, plus other cards, in addition to making up any life deficit. Should not be too terribly difficult to get back between tutoring and Scroll Rack. Kor Firewalker may also be a consideration, if I keep the creature concept, instead of Silver Knight for the life gain, as minimal as it may be. Have to weigh that vs first strike.

[evanmartyr]

Seems bad to give your opponent the means to kill your creatures and then, to ameliorate that, play subpar creatures solely to "turn off" your own removal. Wouldn't just ditching creatures and using cards that get you more lands get the job done just as well, especially since doing so would make most of your opp's removal dead cards?

What about starting with more non-land acceleration, more Land's Edge, few more Enlightened Tutors, etc. Build a deck whose sole intent is to abuse Land Tax, and through that, abuse Land's Edge MORE than your opponent? Throw in some Terminus and Sensei's Divining Top, and you've got a deck that can operate on a very low land-in-play count, and doesn't have to play crummy creatures that get outmatched by nearly every other creature in the format.

Gift of Estates or Tithe could be pretty neat. Simian Spirit Guide could help you set up faster, tax effects (Thalia, etc) could gum up the game and make them play more lands, and Chalice of the Void could buy you some time or give you some game against combo decks.

[rev]

Nothing gives them the means to remove my critters. Land's edge only hits players, and seismic assault can only be used by me. The pro-red is to skirt around bolt, forked lightning, etc.

Terminus and simian spirit guides aren't a bad idea. Just put this together tonight using a shell from a deck I played in high school 15 years ago or so.

[evanmartyr]

Ah, I must have misread Land's Edge. I'd still say that some wR Tax/Shock idea is stronger than a weird combination of white weenie, burn, and enchantment control.

And I would absolutely take out the Academy Rector. Casting them while keeping your land count down would be fairly difficult.

[stealth]

Id say - 4 knights - 4priests, + 4 life from the loam and + 4 knight of relequary (sp), this will really synergize the scroll rack and assualt package.

[Morgothian]

I'm happy to see that great minds think alike, even though your WR Tax Assault has some inconsistencies.

I think that this deck can have a good potential in the current meta, where Tempo RUG, Reanimator, Sneak&Show and Maverick are the decks to beat. what immediately comes into mind looking at this combination of colours and at Land Tax and Seismic Assault is that they are both ENCHANTMENTS, and thus they can be tutored by Enlightened Tutor. Having access to this card in a deck that can create a tremendous amount of card advantage and control the board gives space to a certain number of silver bullets that in many cases lead to an autowin vs. certain MU.

Here's my list, which is giving good results even though it still needs some polishments...i think it's better to play without creatures, to have the advantage of "dead slots" in the opponent hands in the form of creature removals.

4 Mox Diamond
3 Plateau
1 Taiga
3 Wooded foothills
3 Arid Mesa
7 Mountain
3 Plains
1 Forest

4 Land Tax
4 Path to Exile
3 Lava Dart
4 Faithless Looting
3 Enlightened Tutor
3 Gamble
3 Seismic assault

Path to exile and Lava Dart are both removals and enablers for Land Tax. With cheap tutors and filters we can set up our strategy very fast, with ideals scenarios like Mox, Plateau, Land Tax go, Lava Dart or Path EOT, Seismic on turn 2, flashbacking dart and ready to fire from T3...obviously, this is an extreme scenario, but given the high % of tutors it's likely that we are able to have a running combination of Land Tax and Seismic Assaut at the upkeep of T4 in many cases.

the great thing about this deck is the fact you can tailor it for your meta, with epic silver bullets:

2 Scroll Rack

1 Zuran Orb, enabler di Land Tax and helpful vs aggro, Burn and UR Delver

1 Blood Moon

1 Goblin Trenches, enabler di Land Tax and alternative win con/tempo gainer

1 Ensnaring Bridge, prevalently vs. Sneak&Show and Reanimator

1 Oblivion Ring, prevalently against PW and generic hate

1 Trinisphere, anti storm combo

1 Relic of Progenitus, recyclable graveyard hate

1 Life from the Loam, effectively tutorable with Gamble

1 Hull breach, enchanment/artifact hate

I'm working on the sideboard, but so far 4 Leyline of Sanctity, 2 Reb, 3 Pyroblast, 1 Ensanring Bridge, 1 Grafdigger Cage, 1 Pithing Needle, 1 Humility, 1 Pyroclasm and 1 Shattering Spree are my weapons of choice.

[HPB_Eggo]

It seems to me looking at some old Loam control lists might provide some insight as to how to continue in the direction of a build with no creatures.

First of all, Loam and Tax are very similar. They both provide approximately the same CA in decks built to ensure they do so. They obviously both provide it with lands, which is an interesting challenge for building the deck. Loam works via cycle lands, while Tax has to find ways to abuse basic lands in hand without playing them out.

IMO, running both is probably the way to go. It lets you recur your win condition, and run a secondary engine. 2 or 3 seems like a fine idea.

From here, Solitary Confinement seems like the go-to anti-storm card, and works wonders against burn and fast aggrieve.

In addition, Rector now fetches literally everything you want besides Loam. Seems like it would be good against many decks, while being too slow or simply drawing StP or PtE against others. May or may not be a solid card choice.

With Loam and, possibly, Rector, it may also be worthwhile to look into the oldy cycle lands and Lightning Rift/Astral Slide strategy. Whether or not you would also be able to support enough basics for Tax, I am not certain, but it may be worth looking into.

Finally, Mistveil Plains allows you to refresh Tax by putting used lands back into your deck. It is probably most worthwhile when running more non-basics, but one or two should be useful regardless of my other suggestions.

[rev]

What about adding in Devastating Dreams and Zuran Orb? Devastating dreams potentially wipes the board of creatures and lands and Zuran Orb gives me an option to get Land Tax online. Maybe add in an Elixir of Immortality or two to keep up in the life-race and shuffle all the lands back in? Maybe 2 Gamble instead of rectors since rector is difficult to get online and is stp/pte bait?

[rev]

Updated new build.

[TerribleTim68]

I was thinking more mono-white, something like this -

4x Mother Of Runes
4x Soltari Priest
4x Soltari Monk
2x Stoneforge Mystic
4x Mox Diamond
4x Land Tax
4x Swords To Plowshares
4x Armageddon
4x Empyrial Armor
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Sword of Feast and Famine
1x Sword of Fire And Ice
1x Sword of War And Peace
2x Enlightened Tutor
4x Wasteland
16x Plains - maybe swap 4 Plains for 4x Rishadan Port, just not sold on it. I wanna be doing my stuff, not stopping you from doing your stuff.
SB -
Still thinking about this one but:
3x Disenchant
1x Seal Of Cleansing - can be tutored
2x Oblivion Ring
3x True Believer
And some other stuff. :tongue:

I know, not UW. But I think it stands a better chance of making use of Land Tax if you just go back to the list that worked with it and tweak for updates. I still like the shadow guys with the armor, land tax makes them sweet. You can also quickly Geddon and recover faster since you taxed before hand. Idealy you should be able to throw out a shadow guy, armor him up and then Geddon by turn 3. I will be trying this deck out soon. Not sure it's "top tier" stuff, but I enjoyed playing it back then so I should enjoy playing it now. Now if we could only get Balance back. :wink: