UB Wizards

[Johanovich]

I've been toying around with an idea to abuse delver, snapcaster and confidant in an UB shell and this is what I've come up with:

Creatures
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Dark Confidant
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Vendilion Clique

Counters and removal
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Pierce
3 Go for the Throat
1 Darkblast

Discard
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize

Library manipulation
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
2 Sensei's Divining Top

Lands
2 Riptide Laboratory
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Scalding Tarn
3 Swamp
3 Island

Sideboard
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Wipe Away
2 Diabolic Edict
2 Tormod's Crypt
4 Engineered Plague
2 Liliana of the Veil
2 Inquisition of Kozilek

It's called wizard control since all my creatures are wizards (except for transformed delver and factory)
I was originally thinking about a tempo shell with 4 wastelands and stifle, but decided against it because all the creatures have a toughness 1 which makes them very susceptible to engineered plague, pyrokinesis and forked bolt. Therefore I added the mishra's factory, which goes nice with confidant since it functions as a creature that doesn't have a cmc.

In testing I found it has a very good matchup against most combo decks, which is only logical since you have counters and discard and ways of reusing them with snapcaster. The combination of vendilion clique + riptide laboratory is also very nice since you can control every draw of them while you beat with delver or factory.

The aggro/control decks are usually grindgames since you use the same strategy. Flashing back gftt is a huge help here. Factories can trade with of kill mongoose and you have delvers of your own.

Control decks should be doable, especially since you can save a creature with riptide laboratory from terminus. Jitte is a beating with all the toughness 1. Liliana should help here postboard.

Pure aggro decks are a nightmare game 1. Hence the 4 plagues in the board that should take care of them (if you play black and die to tribals, why not play them). Affinity is definitely a horrible matchup because they blank most removal, puke out a lot of creatures and simply race anything you play. If they play chalice it's even worse

What do you guys think? Tips, ideas and (constructive) criticism are welcomed!

[Jenni]

My first thought looking through was a 1-of Counterbalance, to play along with top. you have a decent spread as car as mana costs go, and the tops in place already, so having it as a one-of cutting maybe go for the throat, would be nice for the potential of a soft-lock.

I'd also want liliana main-deck, really, probably -1 Pierce, -1 riptide lab +2 liliana of the veil, since it seems like 22 lands should be fine.

I also like Smother over Go for the throat in legacy black decks, since it hits most things you care about, and it can hit some of affinity's guys as well. Or innocent blood, which is cheaper and could hit things neither Go for the Throat or Smother can hit, but you can't target with it and if you have a wizard out you lose it (it helps deal with Bob if he gets a bit too close to killing you though.)

You might want to consider Chain of Vapour, to deal with artifacts and enchantments, I'm not sure what could be cut for it though, but this deck really has no way to interact with resolved non-creature permanents other than a one-of wipe away.

[Greenpoe]

Liliana sounds like a good suggestion since you'd want more removal (as only your Clique and Delver have evasion, the rest are grounded), helps the aggro MU and she's still helpful vs. combo/control. Maybe a light red (Grimlavamancer & Lightning Bolt) or white (Geist and StP) splash would be good too. The (improved) removal spells in red or white go well with Snapcaster.

[Johanovich]

Thank you for the advice!

I moved liliana main and cut the darkblast and 1 riptide laboratory for her.
This opens up 2 sideboard spaces for 2 echoing truth to deal with noncreature permanents.

I am also testing with smother instead of gftt. Offcourse the main disadvantage is that you can't hit stuff like griselbrand.

I considered both counterbalance and innocent blood before, but I found that with innocent blood as main removal spell losing your own creature can make you lose too much advantage and gives your opponent time to recover. Counterbalance seemed a bit too much and takes up a lot of space. Getting 2 blue for clique and counterbalance and 2 black for liliana consistently also proves difficult at times with a bazilion wastelands going about these days, therefore I try to minimize the double costs.

[Jenni]

Thank you for the advice!

I moved liliana main and cut the darkblast and 1 riptide laboratory for her.
This opens up 2 sideboard spaces for 2 echoing truth to deal with noncreature permanents.

I am also testing with smother instead of gftt. Offcourse the main disadvantage is that you can't hit stuff like griselbrand.

I considered both counterbalance and innocent blood before, but I found that with innocent blood as main removal spell losing your own creature can make you lose too much advantage and gives your opponent time to recover. Counterbalance seemed a bit too much and takes up a lot of space. Getting 2 blue for clique and counterbalance and 2 black for liliana consistently also proves difficult at times with a bazilion wastelands going about these days, therefore I try to minimize the double costs.

gftt on a griselbrand is usually not that exciting anyway, they still draw 7-14 and at that point they can easily replace him. Not to mention the griselbrand decks - show and tell, and reanimator - don't need him to win. Iona and Inkwell leviathan are both essentially immune to gftt and smother and close out the game just as quickly, and show and tell often play omniscience over creatures anyway now. Not to mention the show and tell emrakul decks you can't kill emrakul with gftt either. Basically, if they can cheat griselbrand into play, they can get around your removal anyway.

Fair enough regarding CB and innocent blood, UU and BB can be a bit tricky in the same game, and losing your own creature can be an issue.

[Piceli89]

Where is Jace, the Mind Sculptor?

[Jenni]

Where is Jace, the Mind Sculptor?

What would you cut for Jace? I considered it, but I just couldn't really think of where to fit him.

[Johanovich]

gftt on a griselbrand is usually not that exciting anyway, they still draw 7-14 and at that point they can easily replace him. Not to mention the griselbrand decks - show and tell, and reanimator - don't need him to win. Iona and Inkwell leviathan are both essentially immune to gftt and smother and close out the game just as quickly, and show and tell often play omniscience over creatures anyway now. Not to mention the show and tell emrakul decks you can't kill emrakul with gftt either. Basically, if they can cheat griselbrand into play, they can get around your removal anyway.

You're absolutely right about this and I've should have thought of it since I actually play reanimator myself. Normally the counters and discard combined should prevent them from actually going off.


Where is Jace, the Mind Sculptor?

I don't own any jace, but I did consider him and I don't think he is THAT great for this deck. This isn't a complete control deck that strives to lock out your opponent. It behaves something in between RUG delver and the gate, dropping efficient creatures while disrupting the opponents plays/hand.

He also has UU in his cost which would potentially cause more colorscrew and getting a force flip followed by a jace flip with dark confidant is really painful (I know I play tops but you can't expect to have top in every single game so this scenario is possible).

If I were to go for the full counterbalance + top lock then I would probably play something like 3 jace and 2 liliana since the countertop lock gives you time to develop your mana, but then the deck would be more like a BUG control/miracle hybrid :p maybe something to consider for in the future.

Glad to see people have interest in the deck :tongue:

I will be playing this deck (maybe with a few tweaks for the local metagame) next saturday at a trial for the Belgian legacy cup. I'll post the results afterwards. In the meantime, any advice is still warmly welcomed!

[Piceli89]

I don't own any jace, but I did consider him and I don't think he is THAT great for this deck. This isn't a complete control deck that strives to lock out your opponent. It behaves something in between RUG delver and the gate, dropping efficient creatures while disrupting the opponents plays/hand.

He also has UU in his cost which would potentially cause more colorscrew and getting a force flip followed by a jace flip with dark confidant is really painful (I know I play tops but you can't expect to have top in every single game so this scenario is possible).

If I were to go for the full counterbalance + top lock then I would probably play something like 3 jace and 2 liliana since the countertop lock gives you time to develop your mana, but then the deck would be more like a BUG control/miracle hybrid :p maybe something to consider for in the future.

Glad to see people have interest in the deck :tongue:

I will be playing this deck (maybe with a few tweaks for the local metagame) next saturday at a trial for the Belgian legacy cup. I'll post the results afterwards. In the meantime, any advice is still warmly welcomed!

I don't think this deck plays ala Threshold or the Gate. The first has just cc1 spells, thus it can maximize mana denial tools' efficiency by disrupting very fastly and dropping an undercosted threat to victory. You play none but Delver, which is suboptimal in every deck other than Thresh itself. The Gate has also more relevant board-bombs (Bitterblossom, Jitte), while you're basically playing a UB fish with mild threats that ride tempo advantage or CA to victory, but are all very fragile on themselves.
That's where Jace comes in:
-he's another angle of victory for the deck.
- he sinergizes very well with EACH of your own creatures. See Confidant to not die to his flips. See Delver to flip. See Snapcaster bounced to flashback another spell.
- He's just the best threat at the top of the curve of these similarly-structured decks. Just look at "light" midranges (UB Delver, UR Delver) AJ Sacher used to play some months ago. Having Jace to ramp to means you have a chance against Miracle-like decks. Otherwise, you don't really have.

Regarding manabase: I would prioritize Jace before manabase. Factory is cute and all, but Jace is overall better. I'd smooth it reducing the number of colorless to, like, 2 at max. And they should be Wasteland by the way, since you lose to Punishing Fire and Cavern hurts your deck.

Really, I don't want to sound redundant, but I have a great dose of experience with decks similar to this one you posted, and every time I found myself wanting to strenghten the Jace plan more, with the logical conclusion of cutting Delver (which is a mid-game shitty topdeck) and going for the long, hardcore route.
If you want to keep it in a hybrid way, at least find room for 2 Jaces, because they're too good not to.
Legacy doesn't provide any time to durdle with cute cards (Liliana in Legacy has experienced a tangible downfall, now she's just really mediocre. If you're managing to get her going around, it means that you have active Dark Confidant, which already points out you're winning by a mile or so).
You want to curve out perfectly, and He is just the best choice at the top of it.

P.s. in a UBx aggro/control deck with 4 cc1 discard spells, 3 Forces is the correct number almost always.

[Mackan]

I really like Spellstutter Sprite and Cavern of Souls in a list like this...

[sco0ter]

Where is Patron Wizard? I think he's the main reason to run Wizard tribal in the first place.

EDIT: And, yes, you should run Spellstutter Sprite, especially with Riptide Laboratory. And probably more Wizards in general.


abuse delver, snapcaster and confidant
What is the abuse of these cards in your deck? I mean they are just good cards on their own, but I don't see anything abusive here.