Non-Red Land Destruction Control

[Cire]

I have no clue what clever name to name this deck - or if this deck could even become anything, so I'll avoid the clever name for now. . .

On the Guilds of Ravnica spoiler thread during a discussion of Assassin's Trophy, user Poron made a sort of grouping of cards designed to destroy manabases.

The grouping of cards was:

4 Wasteland
4 Stifle
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Assassin’s Trophy
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Crucible of Worlds

Most decks don't run that many basics, so with Ghost Quater and Assassin's trophy you can blow up non-basics eventually without worry. Stiffle is always the bane of all fetchlands, and Surgical Extration can remove even more non-basics from the library.

I wanted to develop a deck around this idea. The natural progression was off course to use a blue bantrip shell since we are already using blue for Stiffle. The second natural progression was to use Abrupt Decay to take care of problematic cards as Assassin's Trophy, while a vindicate, is primarily thought of in this deck as a Sinkhole.

The general blue shell is:

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
4 Daze

Daze is especially good, in a deck that is designed to prevent mana development.

The general "black/green" shell for BUG decks is:

2 Fatal Push
4 Thought Seize
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Abrupt Decay

Given that you're playing a full set of Assassin's trophy, and draw you don't really need to run Fatal Push. Additionally, Hymn's BB cost may be tricky now that DRS has been banned. Moreover, while the temptation will be to play Delver, due to the mass influx of lands, due to playing 8 sac lands (Wasteland/Ghost Quarter), you will be forced to play around 16 'real' lands. With 22 lands, 4 crucible's running any creatures beyond delver would push your non-spell count to high. There is also the urge to play Phyrexian Dreadnought, due to stiffle, but decks that run Dreadnaught also need to run cards other than stiffle that allow it to ETB.

Thus the below list is sort of stuck with the idea of both finding a decent win con AND making room for such win con.

-23 Lands
4 Wasteland
4 Ghost Quarter
4 verdant catacombs
3 polluted delta
3 underground sea
2 tropical island
2 Bayou
1 misty rainforest

-33 Spells
4 Stifle
4 Assassin’s Trophy
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Thought Seize
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Ponder

-4 Artifacts
4 Crucible of Worlds

You can probably cut

-1 Ponder
-1 Crucible of World
-1 Daze
-1 Assassin's Trophy

Pretty easily - and that would allow you to run Delver. But then hard choices set in. Delver decks don't win with Delver alone. And more than that - this is not really a tempo deck. This is a control deck. The best control win for a while has been Jace, the Mindsculpter. Additionally, given the amount of spells, and given the controlling nature of those spells, Snapcaster Mage seems like a perfect creature to whittle an opponent away and provide control.

But even control decks usually run around 5-6 win cons, so more thought needs to be given as to what should be cut. In the mean time I cut the previously mentioned cards and and two others. I am not saying that this list was tested or that the card amounts were given all that much thought - but, Hopefully the below deck is a decent starting point.

Let me know what you think:


-23 Lands
4 Wasteland
4 Ghost Quarter
4 verdant catacombs
3 polluted delta
3 underground sea
2 tropical island
2 Bayou
1 misty rainforest

-4 Creatures
4 Snapcaster Mage

-28 Spells
4 Stifle
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Thought Seize
3 Daze
3 Assassin’s Trophy
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Ponder

-3 Artifacts
3 Crucible of Worlds

-2 Planeswalkers
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor


So as mentioned - this is a rough starting point and my thought process in trying it out. Going forward is to test the general conceit of the deck - that it can sort of control an opponents mana base AND deal with the threats that actually make it into play (or counter those threats).

[joshman54321]

I would add some number of Creeping Tar Pits to the list to add as an alternate wincon outside of jace or beats with snapcaster.

[kinda]

Looks really fun! I don't understand thoughtseize in the main...your problem will be mostly with low cc threats who get online before you destroy their lands, not the unplayable crap in their hand. Plus you want to be using your mana to blow up their lands/remove threats...if you really want a discard spell I recommend collective brutality. Isochron sceptre is completely bonkers with trophy and solid with your other instants. White still has the best win cons which have synergy with ld in magus of the tabernacle and windborne muse (edit: though adding a 4th colour means you need mox diamond most likely).

[Mr. Safety]

I can't see playing 23 lands, 8 of them colorless, in a 3-color deck without alternate fixing sources. I think at a minimum you need to play probably 3, maybe 4 more colored lands. The good news is they could be win-conditions like Creeping Tar Pit. Mox Diamond comes to mind as well.

Is there a reason you aren't playing Sinkhole? Too color-intensive with 8 colorless lands? I know this is uber-janky, but Urborg + Spreading Algae seems to be a repeatable LD effect. It still lets them tap the land once, but the Algae goes back to hand and the pressure from daze almost forces them to tap that land to play around it. The combination also hits as early as t2. T1 Urborg/Thoughtseize, t2 fetch into Tropical Island/Algae/Cantrip/Hymn/AssTrophy etc. Against fair decks this will slow them down to a crawl.

[Cire]

Looks really fun! I don't understand thoughtseize in the main...your problem will be mostly with low cc threats who get online before you destroy their lands, not the unplayable crap in their hand. Plus you want to be using your mana to blow up their lands/remove threats...

That's a great point! My thinking is that Turn 1 you have stifle to deal with fetchlands, but otherwise they'll be getting 1 mana through your wasteland/GC - thought seize was thought of as in addition to Abrupt Decay - a way to get out problematic permanents prior to when you start controlling their lands.

But if we do take it out, that leaves us with 3 opens spots for either more copies of spells, lands (including creeping tar pit) or more other win cons.


I can't see playing 23 lands, 8 of them colorless, in a 3-color deck without alternate fixing sources. I think at a minimum you need to play probably 3, maybe 4 more colored lands. The good news is they could be win-conditions like Creeping Tar Pit. Mox Diamond comes to mind as well.

I am a bit worried about it, but its not that much worse than what BUG Delver decks play now (20 lands with 4 colorless). I had thought about diamond, but then I didn't even make it to cutting out enough for win cons.



Is there a reason you aren't playing Sinkhole? Too color-intensive with 8 colorless lands? I know this is uber-janky, but Urborg + Spreading Algae seems to be a repeatable LD effect. It still lets them tap the land once, but the Algae goes back to hand and the pressure from daze almost forces them to tap that land to play around it. The combination also hits as early as t2. T1 Urborg/Thoughtseize, t2 fetch into Tropical Island/Algae/Cantrip/Hymn/AssTrophy etc. Against fair decks this will slow them down to a crawl.

Yeah - color intensivity was the issue. Assassin's Trophy has it's draw back which this deck can hopefully mitigate but its so much more versatile than sinkhole. WHile the premise is to use AT as sinkhole, it is still a 2 mana vindicate.

[Mr. Safety]

I'd be wary of decks that can completely blow your mana-base out of the water as well...and with little effort. If you can't play your mana-denial because they stifled/wastelanded your lands it becomes pretty non-game-ish. Then they start landing threats or playing gas while you attempt to work yourself (ironically) out of being mana-screwed.

[Fatal]

Black LD and no sinkhole or smallpox... shame on you !

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

Shadow of Doubt is a cycling Stifle that pairs well with Ghost Quarter

[kinda]

Shadow of Doubt is a cycling Stifle that pairs well with Ghost Quarter

Good shout. I would love this to be playable.

[Cire]

I'd be wary of decks that can completely blow your mana-base out of the water as well...and with little effort. If you can't play your mana-denial because they stifled/wastelanded your lands it becomes pretty non-game-ish. Then they start landing threats or playing gas while you attempt to work yourself (ironically) out of being mana-screwed.

Fair point. Would you cut the thoughtseizes for a number of creeping tar pits?


Black LD and no sinkhole or smallpox... shame on you !

Ha, I know - the urge to take this in the smallpox/sinkhole route with Assassin's trophy etc is strong, but then you would be a fairly dedicated BG deck and I'm part of the unfortunate belief that to be competitive a deck either needs to be a combo deck or run the cantrip shell. smallpox/sinkhole won't let us use that shell, and moreover stiffle happens to essentially be the best LD spell, that happens to be blue.


Shadow of Doubt is a cycling Stifle that pairs well with Ghost Quarter

It pairs well, but that's a 1U/B U/B combo that only destroys a single land. Even if it would be good in the deck I'm not sure it would be better than what's already in it. The deck is trying very hard to avoid danger of cool things. Its essentially just a BUG control deck, that just happens to control through LD.

[Cire]

Quick update to this idea that has not generated much interest. The LD package is extremely effective game 1, and then short-term game 2+3. In game 2+3, most players seem to have exp playing around Stifle and have enough fetch lands to wait it out and stabilize. The issue with that is due to the fact that we don't have many/fast win cons we lose playing control. Instead, we should try to transition into being a tempo deck. The best tempo deck out there atm is UB death's shadow. As so, I've attempted to try to use that as a base.


-22 Lands
4 Wasteland
4 Ghost Quarter
4 verdant catacombs
3 polluted delta
1 Creeping Tar pit
1 underground sea
1 tropical island
1 Bayou
1 Breeding Pool
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 misty rainforest

-12 Creatures
4 Death's Shadow
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Street Wraith

-26 Spells
4 Stifle
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Thought Seize
3 Daze
3 Assassin’s Trophy
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Surgical Extraction


This deck obviously has some worries, mainly it has fewer threats than UB Death's Shadow, and it has even fewer lands than its last iteration and last interaction had Crucible and was still thought to be missing a land or two. Moreover, running only 26 spells means we are in the lower dredges of flipping delver reliably. If we tweek this further it would seem that the idea just turns into a green splash for UB Death's Shadow, which - IDK - i'll leave that to the UB Death's Shadow group that is currently kicking ass. The core of this deck is the LD idea - we're just trying to find a home for it. If the answer is there is no home that's one thing, but still playing around with it, on and off.