joretapo
01-16-2013, 06:16 AM
Hello everyone,
i ve been stalking these forums for quite a while and i am gonna contribute for a change :)
i ve been working on a new deck revolving around land tax, i started with UW for daze treasure hunt but it was weak, i tried parfait builds but it was way too slow and fragile for my taste. So i went to gatherer and started looking around and found seismic assault. That was not the holy grail with its cost and all but the synergy could be there so i started building, i ll cut to the chase and a few gatherer back and forth, i think i have a pretty good synergy there, here is the list.
// Land Assault
// lands 18
11 mountains
7 plains
// combo part
4 seismic assault
3 scroll rack
4 land tax
4 mox diamond
2 valakut, the molten pinnacle
2 planar birth
2 fireball
1 goblin charbelcher
// combo support
2 zuran orb
4 enlightened tutor
4 Jötun Grunt
4 faithless looting
// overall strategy support
4 goblin guide
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
this list is by no means definitive, its first and obvious shortcommings are the lack of removal, it is just a snapshot of the current work. For example the valakut, the molten pinnacle planar birth fireball is a new addition i am testing, it started with planar birth as a burning wish target.
For this reason a will give 2 lists : the list of cards that go in and out regularly during testing and a list of cards with good interactions to be tested.
But before all some explanations :
this deck works with 3 mana max on the board to be able to trigger land tax easily
The core combo is land tax + seismic assault + land count control
the side combo allowing to get to core combo is land tax + scroll rack + land count control
you win by either burning their face down with seismic assault or emptying lands from you r deck for charbelcher, or elspeth or a planar birth to fireball next turn or planar birth with pinacle on the table (6 mountains comming = 18 damages)
you need to mulligan "like a combo deck" it is essential to have at least land tax or enlightened tutor in starting hand plus another tutor or either scroll racks or seismic assault, zuran orb may be mandatory if you havent a mox to put down the land tax without land.
with proper play you can get to activate land tax each turn, there are nothing costing more than 2 except the win cons so you can live off 1 land / 1 mox or 2 lands for the early game and need only break higher when you are ready to kill stuff.
planar birth / valakut / fireball(or another burn like the one uncouterable above 5 mana spent) may seem cute at first but it synergises quite well. First you discard lands to mox then you may have to use land to seismic assault to remove creatures and finally you may have to discard lands because you have no seismic assault / does not want to play them to continue trigerring land tax with 6 mountains in the yard and valakut, the molten pinnacle in the yard you blast for 18 (more if you have a zuran orb and can sac your mountains beforehand) wich sould be enough to one shot any one due to fetchlands. Fireball is slower but a great finisher, i often find myself with 10 lands in yard quite fast, a 13 damage fireball is quite good.
i'm not sure about goblin guide, it is pretty good because it allows you to put more pressure alongside Jötun Grunt and entices your opponent to play more lands than he should.
Jötun Grunt serves two purposes, return lands to your library to keep gas for land tax / seismic assault but i find that less important than in my first lists with plateau and fetches, i just don't seem to run out of gas. Anyway there has to be somewhere some sort of way to put lands back in your library and there comes the second use of grunt : tempo, it either puts pressure on your opponent or unloads pressure on you until you are set up.
the major weakness of the deck is that it overextends and relies fully on land tax triggers. Regularly you will have in play land tax / seismic assault / zuran orb / mox diamond / a creature any kind of mass removal engineered explosive, deed etc will blow you up to oblivion. Elspeth, Knight-Errant might help a bit there with her ultimate but you can t rely on that, boros charm might be aleviate that, i have not tested it yet.
Obviously one can't help but notice that a lot of cards produce card disadvantage :
mox diamond
faithless looting
seismic assault
enlightened tutor
even land tax and scroll rack are card disadvantage at first.
but this is balanced by land tax activations which rapidly creates (2-3 activations) a tremendous card advantage AND a card quality advantage by thinning your deck (even more so with scroll rack in play) and putting lands where you want them to be (everywhere but in your library for belcher, assault, planar birth)
On the plus side i think the current metagame is ready for that kind of list, blood moon isn't curently in the list but i think it should as it will do a lot of damage (see Karten Cotter metagame analysis)
//-------------------
// Good cards that go in and out while testing
//-------------------
// turn 2 blood moon hurts a lot
blood moon
// abeyance serves multiple puposes cantrip to increase consistency, disruption against storm i found it underwhelming every time but on paper it looks good
abeyance
// i tried to build some sort of toolbox / win condition sideboard but wasn t satisfied with it the best i could find was planar birth valakut the rest was not convincing at all so i switched this combo main deck and removed the wishes but it is still a good contender for the flexibility
burning wish
// break their knees, not really tested since i included the planar birth route, but not that desirable otherwise, you need mana even if you have the tools to get out of armagueddon ahead. More often than not it sits idle in hand not helping setting up board position
armageddon
// obiously
path to exile
// here to add more land count regulation, and direct damage
fireblast
// very good
firestorm
// tutorable, cheap returns your lands to your library
feldon's cane
//-------------------
// Rejected
//-------------------
// land count regulation, really underwhelming i removed it.
lava dart
// tried it it seemed usable at first but you always want something else instead of that
lightning storm
i ve looked into landfall triggers to combo off planar birth and nothing was extremely good, hedron crab would be but is off color
the small white cat and the red bug that pump +2/+2 for each land are okay but i don t like the cat because being 0/1 he is useless early game as you often don't play any lands to keep land tax triggering.
Now the untested but potentially good / synergestic cards
{to be updated later, i do not have my list at hand}
//--------------
// to be tested LIST
//--------------
// this one seems very usefull burn is good, indestructible may be required to survive decay
boros Charm
// not tried it yet but might be more intersting than it seems at least while the deck is unknown
mana tithe
well there it is, there are a lot of insightfull people around here, i feel this list can go somewhere, any help is appreciated
i ve been stalking these forums for quite a while and i am gonna contribute for a change :)
i ve been working on a new deck revolving around land tax, i started with UW for daze treasure hunt but it was weak, i tried parfait builds but it was way too slow and fragile for my taste. So i went to gatherer and started looking around and found seismic assault. That was not the holy grail with its cost and all but the synergy could be there so i started building, i ll cut to the chase and a few gatherer back and forth, i think i have a pretty good synergy there, here is the list.
// Land Assault
// lands 18
11 mountains
7 plains
// combo part
4 seismic assault
3 scroll rack
4 land tax
4 mox diamond
2 valakut, the molten pinnacle
2 planar birth
2 fireball
1 goblin charbelcher
// combo support
2 zuran orb
4 enlightened tutor
4 Jötun Grunt
4 faithless looting
// overall strategy support
4 goblin guide
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
this list is by no means definitive, its first and obvious shortcommings are the lack of removal, it is just a snapshot of the current work. For example the valakut, the molten pinnacle planar birth fireball is a new addition i am testing, it started with planar birth as a burning wish target.
For this reason a will give 2 lists : the list of cards that go in and out regularly during testing and a list of cards with good interactions to be tested.
But before all some explanations :
this deck works with 3 mana max on the board to be able to trigger land tax easily
The core combo is land tax + seismic assault + land count control
the side combo allowing to get to core combo is land tax + scroll rack + land count control
you win by either burning their face down with seismic assault or emptying lands from you r deck for charbelcher, or elspeth or a planar birth to fireball next turn or planar birth with pinacle on the table (6 mountains comming = 18 damages)
you need to mulligan "like a combo deck" it is essential to have at least land tax or enlightened tutor in starting hand plus another tutor or either scroll racks or seismic assault, zuran orb may be mandatory if you havent a mox to put down the land tax without land.
with proper play you can get to activate land tax each turn, there are nothing costing more than 2 except the win cons so you can live off 1 land / 1 mox or 2 lands for the early game and need only break higher when you are ready to kill stuff.
planar birth / valakut / fireball(or another burn like the one uncouterable above 5 mana spent) may seem cute at first but it synergises quite well. First you discard lands to mox then you may have to use land to seismic assault to remove creatures and finally you may have to discard lands because you have no seismic assault / does not want to play them to continue trigerring land tax with 6 mountains in the yard and valakut, the molten pinnacle in the yard you blast for 18 (more if you have a zuran orb and can sac your mountains beforehand) wich sould be enough to one shot any one due to fetchlands. Fireball is slower but a great finisher, i often find myself with 10 lands in yard quite fast, a 13 damage fireball is quite good.
i'm not sure about goblin guide, it is pretty good because it allows you to put more pressure alongside Jötun Grunt and entices your opponent to play more lands than he should.
Jötun Grunt serves two purposes, return lands to your library to keep gas for land tax / seismic assault but i find that less important than in my first lists with plateau and fetches, i just don't seem to run out of gas. Anyway there has to be somewhere some sort of way to put lands back in your library and there comes the second use of grunt : tempo, it either puts pressure on your opponent or unloads pressure on you until you are set up.
the major weakness of the deck is that it overextends and relies fully on land tax triggers. Regularly you will have in play land tax / seismic assault / zuran orb / mox diamond / a creature any kind of mass removal engineered explosive, deed etc will blow you up to oblivion. Elspeth, Knight-Errant might help a bit there with her ultimate but you can t rely on that, boros charm might be aleviate that, i have not tested it yet.
Obviously one can't help but notice that a lot of cards produce card disadvantage :
mox diamond
faithless looting
seismic assault
enlightened tutor
even land tax and scroll rack are card disadvantage at first.
but this is balanced by land tax activations which rapidly creates (2-3 activations) a tremendous card advantage AND a card quality advantage by thinning your deck (even more so with scroll rack in play) and putting lands where you want them to be (everywhere but in your library for belcher, assault, planar birth)
On the plus side i think the current metagame is ready for that kind of list, blood moon isn't curently in the list but i think it should as it will do a lot of damage (see Karten Cotter metagame analysis)
//-------------------
// Good cards that go in and out while testing
//-------------------
// turn 2 blood moon hurts a lot
blood moon
// abeyance serves multiple puposes cantrip to increase consistency, disruption against storm i found it underwhelming every time but on paper it looks good
abeyance
// i tried to build some sort of toolbox / win condition sideboard but wasn t satisfied with it the best i could find was planar birth valakut the rest was not convincing at all so i switched this combo main deck and removed the wishes but it is still a good contender for the flexibility
burning wish
// break their knees, not really tested since i included the planar birth route, but not that desirable otherwise, you need mana even if you have the tools to get out of armagueddon ahead. More often than not it sits idle in hand not helping setting up board position
armageddon
// obiously
path to exile
// here to add more land count regulation, and direct damage
fireblast
// very good
firestorm
// tutorable, cheap returns your lands to your library
feldon's cane
//-------------------
// Rejected
//-------------------
// land count regulation, really underwhelming i removed it.
lava dart
// tried it it seemed usable at first but you always want something else instead of that
lightning storm
i ve looked into landfall triggers to combo off planar birth and nothing was extremely good, hedron crab would be but is off color
the small white cat and the red bug that pump +2/+2 for each land are okay but i don t like the cat because being 0/1 he is useless early game as you often don't play any lands to keep land tax triggering.
Now the untested but potentially good / synergestic cards
{to be updated later, i do not have my list at hand}
//--------------
// to be tested LIST
//--------------
// this one seems very usefull burn is good, indestructible may be required to survive decay
boros Charm
// not tried it yet but might be more intersting than it seems at least while the deck is unknown
mana tithe
well there it is, there are a lot of insightfull people around here, i feel this list can go somewhere, any help is appreciated