Rayek
11-12-2015, 02:01 AM
Hey everyone! This deck is an old deck I played quite a bit in the days of yore, never in a tournament, but I'm looking forward to bringing it out/buying it once I get it looked at.
What is it?
A mono-blue lock/control deck based on an old one, putting the Vise back to work.
Instant (15)
2x Boomerang
2x Brainstorm
2x Counterspell
4x Daze
3x Spell Pierce
2x Vapor Snag
Artifact (17)
4x Black Vise
4x Howling Mine
2x Lotus Bloom
2x Mox Diamond
2x Mox Opal
3x Winter Orb
Enchantment (10)
1x Invoke Prejudice
1x Monastery Siege
2x Propaganda
2x Rhystic Study
2x Soul Barrier
2x Standstill
Sorcery (4)
2x Ponder
2x Void Snare
Land (14)
14x Island
Sideboard (15)
2x Back to Basics
2x Damping Matrix
3x Ensoul Artifact
1x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Pithing Needle
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Thwart
1x Zuran Orb
At this juncture, I'd like feedback on how to make this tournament-ready before I shell out cash for cards. My main concern is the early game and being able to answer threats until I can get some sort of lock down for the win condition of Vise. Also advice on how to keep pace with cantrip-heavy decks.
How the deck should work
Get aggressive with Black Vise for initial, early game, freebie damage, hopefully with some kind of counter magic and bouncing cards in hand to put the opponent behind in the early game. Another important early game play is Howling Mine. Even with a Vise in play, Howling Mine is almost never seen as a threat, but remains essential for the win strategy, and the card economy hit I take works in my favor most of the time and serves as an accelerator to enter late-game, and assists me keeping pace with threats. Howling Mine also stacks and is a card that remains useful in every phase of the game.
First lock almost always ends up being Winter Orb. Yes, it is always a massive target, but it needs to be protected as long as possible. Keep Orb on the board through counters, Orb impact to me is reduced through having ample artifact mana available, specifically using Lotus Blooms to cast things like Propaganda, Rhystic Study and Soul Barrier from an Orb lock. Abrupt Decay's prevalence in Legacy is always a problem, but with the acceleration granted by Howling Mine and the sheer number of lock cards, the deck tended to keep pace in tests. Force of Will is another threat that I will regularly lose to, and the only way to effectively combat it is maindecking a few myself once I have cash. I am working on it... Standstill is also a card I just added for early game lock and advantage, but remains useful to keep the opponents up in card count.
Win condition is a resource lock, with heavy drawbacks if the opponent decides to cast any kind of spell. Propaganda makes them pay to attack, Rhystic Study gives me a card for every spell they cast unless they pay, Soul Barrier hits them twice for each creature unless they pay, Invoke Prejudice makes it virtually impossible to cast creatures, Monastery Siege causes them to pay two extra for anything that targets me, and I particularly like Standstill in this game, because whoever breaks the standstill it works for me. It's a great early game play, as well. With an uncastable full hand and multiple Black Vises hitting them every turn, it's game over.
Why it seems to work
Oddly enough, this is a deck that plays extremely well against some of the mainstay cards in Legacy. First of all, many top tier decks run 4x Wasteland and/or depend on Blood Moon for attrition, neither of which will work against this deck (the benefits of ignoring all the cool, amazing cards out there and just going monocolor). I would also say that most top tier decks have some less versatile creature removal on top of Abrupt Decay, like Swords to Plowshares, which will do nothing since I don't run creatures in the deck. Lastly, cards that are universally good in Legacy, like Brainstorm and Ponder, finally have a drawback! Drawing into a Black Vise! ...(maybe?)... I also had a thought... Do Howling Mines HELP the effectiveness of cards like Brainstorm and Ponder, or do they make one of their features (being able to see further into the deck) less useful??
Anyway, ideally, Delver wouldn't be able to keep up with the amount of counter magic a mono-blue deck gives, while seeing some of their staple maindeck cards become useless, although I can see that tempo is clearly in their favor vs this particular build.
Miracles? Not so sure. It doesn't seem to be dependent as much on mana at all, which is why I've sided Pithing Needle (like everyone else in Legacy) to 'stop the Top'.
Lands also might be an issue because I'm running countermagic, but it might not, seeing as with the Orb out, they only get to untap one... Haven't tested it yet.
Young Pyromancer and other token-generating cards in Legacy (...well, basically that card right now) fall to Propaganda for obvious reasons.
One of the best part of this deck, by far, is that none of the locks involve targeting creatures or players, and none of them use activated abilities... Pithing Needle is nigh useless against this deck, creatures with Shroud or Hexproof still fall to a Propaganda and their casters still have to pay extra for them.
About the Sideboard
Because the lock is so important to the way this deck functions, I tried hard to keep the lock cards as varied as possible. If the first game ends with a fully locked and Orb'd opponent, they have more than a few targets for things like Surgical Extraction, which is why I have an alternate lock in Back to Basics that works against a huge number of decks in the Legacy meta and it doesn't effect my deck at all, unlike the Orb. The reason it isn't maindeck'd is because of the extra cost, even though it seems to be a winner. I would venture to say that every time I play with a sideboard I will be swapping two Orbs for two B2B every time.
I also have a second win condition in the case an opponent wants to knock out my Vises: Ensoul Artifact. Not a great tradeoff (1 creature for two cards, opening me up for a 1-for-two trade if they get rid of it), but in a creatureless first game, I wouldn't count on my opponents keeping much creature removal in the deck, and having a 5/5 Black Vise on turn two, or even better, a 5/5 Howling Mine (kill it and they lose an extra card a turn), seems like a winner, and more than a little useful in a deck like this as an alternate strategy. I thought about other cards, but there's nothing quite like building a deck against creatures and then using them in the 2nd game for 5 damage a turn.
The Zuran Orb is insurance against burn. If all goes well, I will have a ton of tapped lands every single turn that are piling up and generally useless. Why not sack them to a Zuran Orb?
Other things are obvious, Surgical Extraction is too good not to include, Damping Matrix against every permanent they might have that's not attacking me, Grafdigger's Cage for some yard hate, and... Thwart. Yea, that's a working placeholder for when I manage to be rich enough to afford Force of Will.
About Specific Cards
Yeah, so you're thinking WTF on a couple choices, and I am too.. For instance, Rhystic Study seems far too costly/slow to be useful at all. I am looking for alternatives in the same vein, I used to have 3 Font of Mythos in a previous build, but that's just a horrible idea... The card advantage tradeoff wasn't worth it, obviously, so I needed something in this new build to keep my card numbers up, and when compared to the Font, Rhystic Study seems like a winner. (Still a loser overall... *shrugs*)
Counterspell is a working placeholder for the Force of Wills that I will eventually, begrudgingly buy. Sorry, I hate the reserved list. I used to run Thwart in my maindeck, and you'll see it in the sideboard. It made sense because if I got an Orb lock, I'd (again) have a stack of dumb islands that did nothing other than let me Daze, so it made sense. The problem was, obviously, it taking the place of something cheaper that was better for my poor early game, and if I needed to use it on turn three, it'd be game over. Much rather have FoW.
Alt. Mana
Important to reduce impact from an Orb lock. I kept going back and forth between 4 Mox Diamonds and 2 while I was making this list. I find that with the number of lands I have in deck, running 4 doesn't seem like a responsible choice. When I played with two, I almost never held one in my hand for more than a turn or two. However with more, I found myself needing to play the lands more than casting the Moxes and would end up having one in hand for more than a few turns. Might put three in there just in case.
Mox Opal is great, but since the draw is heavy in this game and it's a Legendary card, I only put two in. I own a playset of Chrome Mox and I might find a place for those, but lands are far less important while playing this deck out, and I'd rather not use a possible resource to Chrome Mox.
Lotus Bloom is for the Dark Ritual effect. I haven't read any articles about the bloom, but I don't see it a lot in competitive play. I'd like to play with it a few times to see what's up with it, or hear what the case is against running with it.
HELP!
So, obviously this is a draft deck idea, based off years of observing a previous iteration of the deck and attempting to make it more competitive after observing what the meta is like. The basic build seems good against a lot of the general strategies and removal of the Legacy meta at the moment. I'm worried about cantrip-heavy decks that get ahead early on in the game. I added Brainstorms and Ponders to this build because without them there was nothing for me to keep up, but I'm thinking I'll need a lot more counter magic in order to beat back on the flood. I'm interested in hearing ideas about balance between counters, bouncers, and brainstorms/ponders. I'm also particularly vulnerable to good removal cards like Abrupt Decay, but who isn't! It just hurts especially bad when it hits an Orb :(. I also immediately sigh at decks that run 4xStifle, as there's a ton of triggered effects bouncing around that need to work at least 90% of the time they're in play.
I also imagine I will be countering a lot of counters, so any tips on how to win frequent counterspell fights would be useful.
Adjusting numbers to accommodate more of a different kind of spell, should I go the route of every single friggin Legacy control build and put 4 boring Gitaxian Probes to keep up the pace? Should I get super-clinical and jam Stifle in there?
What do you think about Sunken Field? eh? eh? aww, comeon! no? really? pssssh....
Thanks ;)
What is it?
A mono-blue lock/control deck based on an old one, putting the Vise back to work.
Instant (15)
2x Boomerang
2x Brainstorm
2x Counterspell
4x Daze
3x Spell Pierce
2x Vapor Snag
Artifact (17)
4x Black Vise
4x Howling Mine
2x Lotus Bloom
2x Mox Diamond
2x Mox Opal
3x Winter Orb
Enchantment (10)
1x Invoke Prejudice
1x Monastery Siege
2x Propaganda
2x Rhystic Study
2x Soul Barrier
2x Standstill
Sorcery (4)
2x Ponder
2x Void Snare
Land (14)
14x Island
Sideboard (15)
2x Back to Basics
2x Damping Matrix
3x Ensoul Artifact
1x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Pithing Needle
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Thwart
1x Zuran Orb
At this juncture, I'd like feedback on how to make this tournament-ready before I shell out cash for cards. My main concern is the early game and being able to answer threats until I can get some sort of lock down for the win condition of Vise. Also advice on how to keep pace with cantrip-heavy decks.
How the deck should work
Get aggressive with Black Vise for initial, early game, freebie damage, hopefully with some kind of counter magic and bouncing cards in hand to put the opponent behind in the early game. Another important early game play is Howling Mine. Even with a Vise in play, Howling Mine is almost never seen as a threat, but remains essential for the win strategy, and the card economy hit I take works in my favor most of the time and serves as an accelerator to enter late-game, and assists me keeping pace with threats. Howling Mine also stacks and is a card that remains useful in every phase of the game.
First lock almost always ends up being Winter Orb. Yes, it is always a massive target, but it needs to be protected as long as possible. Keep Orb on the board through counters, Orb impact to me is reduced through having ample artifact mana available, specifically using Lotus Blooms to cast things like Propaganda, Rhystic Study and Soul Barrier from an Orb lock. Abrupt Decay's prevalence in Legacy is always a problem, but with the acceleration granted by Howling Mine and the sheer number of lock cards, the deck tended to keep pace in tests. Force of Will is another threat that I will regularly lose to, and the only way to effectively combat it is maindecking a few myself once I have cash. I am working on it... Standstill is also a card I just added for early game lock and advantage, but remains useful to keep the opponents up in card count.
Win condition is a resource lock, with heavy drawbacks if the opponent decides to cast any kind of spell. Propaganda makes them pay to attack, Rhystic Study gives me a card for every spell they cast unless they pay, Soul Barrier hits them twice for each creature unless they pay, Invoke Prejudice makes it virtually impossible to cast creatures, Monastery Siege causes them to pay two extra for anything that targets me, and I particularly like Standstill in this game, because whoever breaks the standstill it works for me. It's a great early game play, as well. With an uncastable full hand and multiple Black Vises hitting them every turn, it's game over.
Why it seems to work
Oddly enough, this is a deck that plays extremely well against some of the mainstay cards in Legacy. First of all, many top tier decks run 4x Wasteland and/or depend on Blood Moon for attrition, neither of which will work against this deck (the benefits of ignoring all the cool, amazing cards out there and just going monocolor). I would also say that most top tier decks have some less versatile creature removal on top of Abrupt Decay, like Swords to Plowshares, which will do nothing since I don't run creatures in the deck. Lastly, cards that are universally good in Legacy, like Brainstorm and Ponder, finally have a drawback! Drawing into a Black Vise! ...(maybe?)... I also had a thought... Do Howling Mines HELP the effectiveness of cards like Brainstorm and Ponder, or do they make one of their features (being able to see further into the deck) less useful??
Anyway, ideally, Delver wouldn't be able to keep up with the amount of counter magic a mono-blue deck gives, while seeing some of their staple maindeck cards become useless, although I can see that tempo is clearly in their favor vs this particular build.
Miracles? Not so sure. It doesn't seem to be dependent as much on mana at all, which is why I've sided Pithing Needle (like everyone else in Legacy) to 'stop the Top'.
Lands also might be an issue because I'm running countermagic, but it might not, seeing as with the Orb out, they only get to untap one... Haven't tested it yet.
Young Pyromancer and other token-generating cards in Legacy (...well, basically that card right now) fall to Propaganda for obvious reasons.
One of the best part of this deck, by far, is that none of the locks involve targeting creatures or players, and none of them use activated abilities... Pithing Needle is nigh useless against this deck, creatures with Shroud or Hexproof still fall to a Propaganda and their casters still have to pay extra for them.
About the Sideboard
Because the lock is so important to the way this deck functions, I tried hard to keep the lock cards as varied as possible. If the first game ends with a fully locked and Orb'd opponent, they have more than a few targets for things like Surgical Extraction, which is why I have an alternate lock in Back to Basics that works against a huge number of decks in the Legacy meta and it doesn't effect my deck at all, unlike the Orb. The reason it isn't maindeck'd is because of the extra cost, even though it seems to be a winner. I would venture to say that every time I play with a sideboard I will be swapping two Orbs for two B2B every time.
I also have a second win condition in the case an opponent wants to knock out my Vises: Ensoul Artifact. Not a great tradeoff (1 creature for two cards, opening me up for a 1-for-two trade if they get rid of it), but in a creatureless first game, I wouldn't count on my opponents keeping much creature removal in the deck, and having a 5/5 Black Vise on turn two, or even better, a 5/5 Howling Mine (kill it and they lose an extra card a turn), seems like a winner, and more than a little useful in a deck like this as an alternate strategy. I thought about other cards, but there's nothing quite like building a deck against creatures and then using them in the 2nd game for 5 damage a turn.
The Zuran Orb is insurance against burn. If all goes well, I will have a ton of tapped lands every single turn that are piling up and generally useless. Why not sack them to a Zuran Orb?
Other things are obvious, Surgical Extraction is too good not to include, Damping Matrix against every permanent they might have that's not attacking me, Grafdigger's Cage for some yard hate, and... Thwart. Yea, that's a working placeholder for when I manage to be rich enough to afford Force of Will.
About Specific Cards
Yeah, so you're thinking WTF on a couple choices, and I am too.. For instance, Rhystic Study seems far too costly/slow to be useful at all. I am looking for alternatives in the same vein, I used to have 3 Font of Mythos in a previous build, but that's just a horrible idea... The card advantage tradeoff wasn't worth it, obviously, so I needed something in this new build to keep my card numbers up, and when compared to the Font, Rhystic Study seems like a winner. (Still a loser overall... *shrugs*)
Counterspell is a working placeholder for the Force of Wills that I will eventually, begrudgingly buy. Sorry, I hate the reserved list. I used to run Thwart in my maindeck, and you'll see it in the sideboard. It made sense because if I got an Orb lock, I'd (again) have a stack of dumb islands that did nothing other than let me Daze, so it made sense. The problem was, obviously, it taking the place of something cheaper that was better for my poor early game, and if I needed to use it on turn three, it'd be game over. Much rather have FoW.
Alt. Mana
Important to reduce impact from an Orb lock. I kept going back and forth between 4 Mox Diamonds and 2 while I was making this list. I find that with the number of lands I have in deck, running 4 doesn't seem like a responsible choice. When I played with two, I almost never held one in my hand for more than a turn or two. However with more, I found myself needing to play the lands more than casting the Moxes and would end up having one in hand for more than a few turns. Might put three in there just in case.
Mox Opal is great, but since the draw is heavy in this game and it's a Legendary card, I only put two in. I own a playset of Chrome Mox and I might find a place for those, but lands are far less important while playing this deck out, and I'd rather not use a possible resource to Chrome Mox.
Lotus Bloom is for the Dark Ritual effect. I haven't read any articles about the bloom, but I don't see it a lot in competitive play. I'd like to play with it a few times to see what's up with it, or hear what the case is against running with it.
HELP!
So, obviously this is a draft deck idea, based off years of observing a previous iteration of the deck and attempting to make it more competitive after observing what the meta is like. The basic build seems good against a lot of the general strategies and removal of the Legacy meta at the moment. I'm worried about cantrip-heavy decks that get ahead early on in the game. I added Brainstorms and Ponders to this build because without them there was nothing for me to keep up, but I'm thinking I'll need a lot more counter magic in order to beat back on the flood. I'm interested in hearing ideas about balance between counters, bouncers, and brainstorms/ponders. I'm also particularly vulnerable to good removal cards like Abrupt Decay, but who isn't! It just hurts especially bad when it hits an Orb :(. I also immediately sigh at decks that run 4xStifle, as there's a ton of triggered effects bouncing around that need to work at least 90% of the time they're in play.
I also imagine I will be countering a lot of counters, so any tips on how to win frequent counterspell fights would be useful.
Adjusting numbers to accommodate more of a different kind of spell, should I go the route of every single friggin Legacy control build and put 4 boring Gitaxian Probes to keep up the pace? Should I get super-clinical and jam Stifle in there?
What do you think about Sunken Field? eh? eh? aww, comeon! no? really? pssssh....
Thanks ;)