Bad Deck Idea - Mono Blue, no countermagic

[AceOfJacks]

Hello everyone.

I play bad decks. Mostly because I hate counterspells. Also, I'm a stupid worthless loser. But that's not important. I present to you, a bad deck idea.

Original Decklist:
Artifacts
4 Defense Grid
4 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Scroll Rack
2 Ensnaring Bridge

Artifact Creatures
4 Etherium Sculptor
2 Psychosis Crawler

Instants
4 Brainstorm
1 Long-Term Plans
1 Wipe Away

Sorceries
1 Transmute Artifact
4 Fabricate
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Preordain

Lands
2 Academy Ruins
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
9 Island

Sideboard:
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Wipe Away
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 Back to Basics


Ok. So, it's a pretty stupid plan. The plan is to land an Etherium Sculptor, and then find 2 Sensei's Divining Tops, and ultimately a Psychosis Crawler. Once the Crawler and Sculptor are in play, use the Tops to infinitely draw each other, causing the draw trigger from the Crawler to make your opponents lose the game via life loss.

Card choices:

Combo:
Etherium Sculptor: makes the Top cost 0 mana, so you can cast it for free. Other considerations for this slot: Helm of Awakening, but it help your opponent. The downside to the Sculptor is that it could die to both artifact and creature removal.
Sensei's Divining Top: requires 2 to win. This is also useful to help dig for your other pieces. Unfortunately, if your opponent plays Pithing Needle, Phyrexian Revoker, or Krosan Grip, then you pretty much lose the game.
Psychosis Crawler: the actual win condition. I chose this instead of the 3 other things that I found as possible win conditions. Also, the other combo pieces are artifacts, so casting Fabricate can find this win condition as well as other combo pieces. Both Brain Freeze and Sphinx's Tutelage require your opponent to be targetable, and any graveyard shuffle triggers makes this useless as a win condition. Thought Harvester gets around the graveyard shuffle trigger, but still requires your opponent to be targetable.

Digging:
Gitaxian Probe: Costs 2 life or 1 mana, draws a card, and can possibly let us see if we have to worry about counterspells or removal pieces.
Ponder: Allows us to shuffle if the top 3 cards are useless.
Preordain: Can be useful after a Brainstorm if we do not have a fetchland.
Brainstorm: Can be used to put away lands that we do not want, also combines well with fetchlands as well as the other digging spells.
Fabricate: All of our combo pieces are artifacts. This is as close to Demonic Tutor that we can get.
Long-Term Plans: With a Top in play, it's a Vampiric Tutor without the life loss.
Transmute Artifact: If we have an extra Scroll Rack or Top in play, we can use this to find something more useful.
Scroll Rack: Can be used to hide cards at instant speed, or reshuffle the cards we don't want with a fetchland or Ponder.

Protection:
Ensnaring Bridge: Creatures hit hard. This helps keep you alive while you dig.
Defense Grid: Helps stop countermagic and instant speed removal.
Academy Ruins: Helps if something gets destroyed.
Wipe Away: Gets rid of the random Eidolon of the Great Revel, Chains of Mephistopheles, Thalia, etc. I wish I had room for more of these.

Sideboard:
Leyline of the Void: Stops graveyard shenanigans, such as dredge or reanimation.
Leyline of Sanctity: Stops burn and Helm of Obedience, both of which are sometimes played in my meta.
Back to Basics: People who play Legacy sometimes have money. I don't. At least not anymore. But the people who do, have these things called "dual lands" in their decks. I get depressed when I see them. This card helps me make my opponent depressed as well.
Ratchet Bomb: This deck has 20 cards in it that cost 1 mana. As such, Chalice of the Void set at 1 would make the deck almost completely unplayable. Hopefully this will help against that.
Wipe Away: If I can find a way to put these in main, this would probably become more Ratchet Bombs, or some actually playable card, since I'm bad at making decks.



Ok. I immediately notice the following problems:
Chalice of the Void kills the deck.
"Counter target spell" is something I don't like to play, which severely limits my options.
I have no way to interact with my opponents, and as such, I have no way to deal with opposing threats. Creature rush kills me, burn kills me, I can't stop opposing combos ... pretty much I have to hope that I dig really fast, and all my spells resolve and my things stay on the table.

So ... how do we turn this pile of garbage into a slightly better pile of garbage? Is is possible to actually make this playable, without adding counterspells?



Edit:
I have done a little more thinking. I have gone back to the original deck idea, removing the Phyrexian Dreadnought plan.

New decklist:
1 Academy Ruins
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
7 Island

4 Brainstorm
3 Devastation Tide
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Fabricate

4 Trinket Mage
4 Street Wraith
1 Psychosis Crawler

2 Altar of the Brood
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Helm of Awakening

Sideboard:
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Defense Grid
3 Back to Basics

[square_two]

Altar of the Brood is probably better than Crawler. Super cheap. Have you seen the Artificer's Intuition deck? This looks a lot like it.

[Begle1]

Brainstorming...

The fundamental problem I see with the deck is that it is all in on Divining Tops + Psychosis Crawler + Cost Reducer combo. The rest of the deck is all tutors and dig for that combo, without much of interaction for the opponents. But still I don't know if you can ever combo off before turn four?

I'd try to add another angle of attack to the deck, a Plan B combo or back-up plan.

Is Counterbalance a "counterspell"? It'd be a reasonable addition. You could play around with Miracles with that top deck manipulation, or Skill Borrower, or maybe even Thought Lash and Laboratory Maniac. You could go full "top deck control" by adding Lantern of Insight/ Field of Dreams and Ghoulcaller's Bell/ etc.


With higher mana cost cards, you can add Sol lands and make it a Stompy thing if you want to get around Chalice.

If you add Hurkyl's Recall, you can laugh at Chalice of the Void while enabling a "Cheerios" type of build that generates storm count by playing little artifacts, Recalling them back to your hand, and repeating. It could be a secondary plan to the "Divining Top storm". Psychosis Crawler is a bit clunky as a win condition, I'd rather have a Brainfreeze or Grapeshot maybe.

You could add some Trinket Mages or some Phyrexian Dreadnought combo pieces for a Plan B.

You could go the direction of "Blue Mud" and add some Kuldotha Forgemasters, Grim Monoliths, Metalworkers, et cetera.

There's also always Painter's Servant + Grindstone, along with whatever color hate cards that can play well with the Servant.

[AceOfJacks]

To reply to both comments:

Counterbalance, probably no. I play Chalice in my Sneak Attack deck, and Nether Void in my Pox deck, so there is some sort of "Catholic Nun Teacher slapping you on the knuckles while screaming 'NO!' whenever you cast a spell," but Counterbalance seems a little too "power complex" for my tastes. Also, it requires building the deck around it. Sounds like too much work


Altar of the Brood, while good mana-wise, still loses to Emrakul, which is played in my meta. If I was splashing white for Rest in Peace and Enlightened Tutor, then I wouldn't have to worry, but if I'm leaning on Leyline of the Void for that interaction, then I would have to aggressively mulligan for it. Sounds risky. It merits additional thought.

Re: turn 4: I was thinking if there was a faster way to do it without having to worry about Hexproof and Emrakul, but I can't think of anything that I can do other than changing the mana base to include Ancient Tomb and Lotus Petal.

Re: Trinket Mage and Phyrexian Dreadnought: I assume the only combo piece in thia case would be Cloudform? If so, I would increase the Scroll Rack count, so I can put them on top, if I don't have a Brainstorm in my hand. I would hate having to buy Stifles. I would rather stab myself in the eye with a rusty spoon.

Painter Grindstone, meh. If I did play that, then I would have to play cards like Hydroblast. Counterspells make me vomit.

So, based on my bad deckbuilding, combined with advise from people who are smarter than me, I am leaning towards the following:
-1 Long-Term Plans
-1 Wipe Away
-1 Transmute Artifact
-2 Ensnaring Bridge
-1 Defense Grid
-1 Island
-1 Etherium Sculptor
-1 Preordain

+4 Trinket Mage
+3 Cloudform
+2 Phyrexian Dreadnought

Possibly -1 Psychosis Crawler and +1 Altar of the Brood?

[AceOfJacks]

Updated decklist:
2 Academy Ruins
2 Eye of Ugin
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Island

3 Cloudform
4 Brainstorm
4 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Altar of the Brood
2 Scroll Rack

3 Renegade Doppelganger
4 Eldrazi Mimic
4 Thought-Knot Seer
3 Endless One
4 Trinket Mage
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Etherium Sculptor

Sideboard:
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Defense Grid
2 Winter Orb
2 Wipe Away

I looked at the Eldrazi Mimic / Phyrexian Dreadnought combo, and decided to try Renegade Doppelganger as well. So now it's an Eldrazi deck ... with a random combo alternative win condition. Somehow, I feel I made the deck worse. Yay, bad decks!

[AceOfJacks]

I have done a little more thinking. I have gone back to the original deck idea, removing the Phyrexian Dreadnought plan.

New decklist:
1 Academy Ruins
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
7 Island

4 Brainstorm
3 Devastation Tide
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Fabricate

4 Trinket Mage
4 Street Wraith
1 Psychosis Crawler

2 Altar of the Brood
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Helm of Awakening

Sideboard:
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Defense Grid
3 Back to Basics

With my fishbowling, I have seen turn 3 kills a lot. This, of course, assumes the opponent has not done anything to stop us, which is probably not going to be the truth in actual games.

Some logic:
1x Psychosis Crawler as a backup in case the opponent has a shuffle effect, like Emrakul or Blightsteel Colossus.
3x Devastation Tide to clear the board when they clog up the board with things that stop you, like Chalice of the Void, Sphere/Thorn effects, etc.
Trinket Mage helps to find combo pieces, and can block while you dig.
Helm of Awakening has been added and Etherium Sculptor has been removed. It allows the use of Ancient Tomb instead, which can POSSIBLY give you a turn 1 kill. Not very likely, mind you, but it's now possible. (Ancient Tomb, Helm of Awakening, 2x Sensei's Divining Top, Altar of the Brood.)

Obviously this is still very fragile, as it has no way to deal with any form of disruption. However, I do not like playing countermagic, so if it gets any improvements, it will have to play around losing to disruption.

[square_two]

Intuition is probably much better than Fabricate since it is instant speed, and it grabs anything. You've got Academy Ruins to grab a Top from your yard.

[Ragnar]

If you're running the helm then I propose you name the deck "top hat," since your win condition is two tops and a hat.

[AceOfJacks]

If you're running the helm then I propose you name the deck "top hat," since your win condition is two tops and a hat.

That would require that the deck actually works in the first place. I tried several configurations in three weeks, but other than the random turn 1 kill, the deck pretty much flopped. Maybe I will update the list and tey again later on, but not anytime soon.