Bug rfg

[Jacob]

I've been tweaking this deck for a bit, and it has started doing well enough that I wanted some opinions.

This is the most recent iteration:


4 Force of Will
3 Misthollow Griffin
3 Torrent Elemental
2 Misdirection
4 Underground Sea
2 Polluted Delta
2 Dig Through Time
4 Brainstorm
4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Tropical Island
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Wasteland
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Thoughtseize
4 Baleful Strix
2 Bayou
1 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Island

//Sideboard
SB: 2 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 1 Life from the Loam
SB: 1 Pernicious Deed
SB: 1 Batterskull
SB: 1 Golgari Charm
SB: 2 Engineered Plague
SB: 2 Disfigure
SB: 1 Notion Thief
SB: 1 Thoughtseize
SB: 2 Nihil Spellbomb
SB: 1 Scavenging Ooze


Torrent Elemental is an absolute beast, at least in my local meta. There is exactly one card that can deal with it effectively: Terminus. It makes D&T cry. Having 3 Thoughtseize, 4 Force and 2 Misdirection makes life difficult for any sort of combo deck. Being able to cast Force and Misdirection without actually pitching a card is huge. Not needing to keep a win condition instead of pitching it to Force is huge.

Thoughts?

[maharis]

Looks cool but why is it better than straight up Food Chain combo?

[Jacob]

Food Chain is a very different deck. It uses Misthollow to get a lot of mana and cast something big like Emrakul. Misthollow is just a part of the mana producing combo. Food Chain, which is useless by itself, has to be there. Then you need a separate win-con, which usually will not be very good without the rest of the combo.

This actually wins by swinging with Misthollow and Torrent Elemental. All the other parts of the deck are genuinely good control cards. Compare to Food Chain's list. Force is made even better, because you don't lose a card to it. Misdirection is made more playable. There is no combo to assemble. The rest of the deck plays well as a legacy deck itself, but retains its win conditions even after pitching to Force or Misdirection.

Its threats are also pretty much impossible to get rid of. If they kill them, I can remove them with DTT or DRS. Swords is pretty much worthless. The best they can do is tuck them back into my deck. There is no way to neuter deck from threats.

Food Chain is a combo deck. This is a control deck with flying beaters that are a lot harder to get rid of than Entreat tokens.

[maharis]

Fair enough. I am intrigued, though I don't think I could play this without Manipulate Fate.

[Jacob]

What good does Manipulate Fate do? Remove the cards that you are using to fuel Force of Will from your deck? I could play fewer if I wanted.

Anyway, this deck is too mana hungry to spend 2 on a sorcery to cantrip.

Put Food Chain out of your mind. Start thinking more like Miracles.

[Undomian]

This is an interesting idea but I'm not sure that you need to be playing so many threats. The reason you're playing cards like Misthollow Griffin and Torrent Elemental is because they're impossible to remove forever, so you don't really need the quantity of them that you do have to compensate for removal. I could see maybe cutting your copies of Torrent Elemental for Manipulate Fate, since that finds you the threats you need for the rest of the game and replaces itself.

[Jacob]

I may cut more, but I would keep the number of Torrent Elementals and Misthollow Griffins equal. It is a real beating sometimes. I would have to playtest it.

The biggest problem with Manipulate Fate is the mana. Right now, Brainstorm and Liliana have been making use of any extras I draw. Tapping out for a cantrip and slightly better draws doesn't seem worth it to me. I would rather have a Thoughtseize or Gitaxian Probe.

[somethingdotdotdot]

Manipulate fate is basically an engine card in this sort of deck. Instead of thinking of it as a cantrip, its a draw 4.

[TsumiBand]

Right but if the idea is to capitalize on pitch spells then Manipulate Fate is really not doing anyone any favors. Manipulate Fate is also a lousy card by itself, in the same way as Food Chain is useless on its own.

The deck isn't playing the exile-castable creatures to cheat them into play, it's doing it to maintain parity when casting pitch spells/Delve spells/etc. In this way the threat density can be light but the deck can still keep a presence on the board after throwing all those Forces and MisD's around. Almost like giving FoW a 2UU kicker that puts a 3/3 flyer onto the battlefield.

[Holmen]

Hi! In Food chain, griffin isn't just part of a mana combo. I win more than half of the games simply by going fate into chain into 9 power vigilance in the air, that also lets me semifog if needed and replay if removed. The deck can work as a control-valueBUG with chain as a possible autowin when trouble comes.

[HPB_Eggo]

You might want to consider running a Tasigur in the list. He can exile Elementals and Griffins that end up in your graveyard, and is just generally solid with the potential of being pretty silly if you're flooded and have the right stuff in your yard.

That said, would not run more than one, and running even one is probably not the right move when you currently have more room for extra copies of DTT (which I would also consider adding).