Named Prison

[4eak]

I have a magic fetish for prison decks. They fascinate me. There aren't many ways to build a prison in magic (speaking mostly of hard locks, rather than soft). E.g. Mana denial (of which there are many varieties) is almost always how it is done (often coupled with at least one other method), but also stack control through counterspells/CBTop/Chalice, discard locks (except instants), repeated turn-long effects, like turbofog (weird and wonderful) or No-stick's repeated applications of Silence effects. I've another I want to make remotely playable.

Here it is:

// Lands - 24
2 Island
5 Plains
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Glacial Fortress
3 Arid Mesa
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Hallowed Fountain

// Purely Preventative - 12
4 Meddling Mage
4 Nevermore
4 Council of the Absolute

// Purely Reactive - 8
4 Exclusion Ritual
4 Detention Sphere

// Hybrid - 12
4 Runed Halo
4 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Voidstone Gargoyle

// Meh - 4
4 Sensei's Divining Top

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Declaration of Naught
SB: 4 Chalice of the Void

You name cards in their deck that are important, and they can't hurt you with them or cast them. It's pretty hilarious.

I've tried to go Modern with this, but I ended up throwing Top in there /shrug. I tried to go without the usual staples to make it more interesting, but I may just cave in. Any suggestions about card choices are appreciated.


peace,
4eak

[Slag]

Unless you want to bank solely on your psychic powers, gitaxian probe and portent will help you see what's coming up from your opponents. It's not quite in your theme, but I've always thought cornered market would make a good prison card.

[Koby]

I'm surprised there's no Glasses of Urza to make sure you know what's about to come!

[FTW]

Unless you want to bank solely on your psychic powers, gitaxian probe and portent will help you see what's coming up from your opponents. It's not quite in your theme, but I've always thought cornered market would make a good prison card.

Cornered Market would be good except:
1) nobody PLAYS the second Tropical Island. somehow an activated ability always puts one onto the battlefield...
2) it does stop opponents from beating down with 2 Delvers or 2 Goyfs at once, but Detention Sphere does that even better as a 3cc enchantment

Speaking of psychic powers, I hear fatesealing the opponent every turn helps. Any room?

[4eak]

Alright, so I've tried your suggestions. I think the Peek effect is wonderful. I will be playing this deck casually at my own kitchen table, and so I'll always know what I'm playing against and every single card in the deck. For this deck, a lot of the usefulness of Peeking is to give you that initial information advantage in G1 (particularly against random stuff), which I won't need. That said, Peek always gives you that immediate information which is also highly useful in naming.

This is what I've moved to:

// Lands - 22
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Sejiri Refuge
10 Plains

// Purely Preventative - 12
4 Meddling Mage
4 Nevermore
4 Council of the Absolute

// Purely Reactive - 8
4 Exclusion Ritual
4 Detention Sphere

// Hybrid - 12
4 Runed Halo
4 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Voidstone Gargoyle

// Peek - 6
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Glasses of Urza

I saw that the manabase could be cheapened (which I don't have to do, but I really enjoy doing whenever I can - I don't usually get to play with many of these different lands).

I had used 4 Probe and 4 Peek/Portent, but 20 lands wasn't cutting it. I prefer cantrips, which glasses aren't (and glasses have severe dim returns in multiples). I've never had a deck in which Glasses was a good card though, lol. It definitely has a lot of flavor to it.


Speaking of psychic powers, I hear fatesealing the opponent every turn helps. Any room?
I'm not sure which card you are talking about, sorry. Can you be specific or clarify what you mean, please?



peace,
4eak

[Aggro_zombies]

I'm not sure which card you are talking about, sorry. Can you be specific or clarify what you mean, please?
Probably Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

[FTW]

Probably Jace, the Wallet Raper.

Fixed.

If you're not running Tundras don't worry about my suggestion. However, if you can afford him, Jace has huge interactions with the deck, allowing you to:
a) see what's coming and name it
b) fateseal away cards that you have not yet named
c) brainstorm to smooth out the consistency of your hand, which is huge when you're playing 20 MeddlingMage.dec
d) bounce a creature that has been Meddling Mage'd so that they can't cast it again
e) have a legitimate win condition other than attacking with 2/2s

I hope no one at your kitchen table plays any Dredge/Ichorid budget variant because your deck is totally soft to it free 3/1 hastes and 2/2 zombie tokens.