[Deck] Ur Trix

[Cait_Sith]

Trix, once a fearsome combo-control that ran three reject rares (Donate, Illusions of Grandeur, and Necropotence) is not not much more than a memory. Being the crazy person that I am I would love to bring this deck back and would be happy to have it at Tier 2. So, without further ado, the list

// Lands
4 [B] Volcanic Island
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
10 [8E] Island (4)

// Spells
4 [U] Counterspell
4 [IA] Illusions of Grandeur
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [NE] Accumulated Knowledge
4 [HL] Merchant Scroll
3 [TE] Intuition
4 [TE] Sapphire Medallion
2 [AP] Fire/Ice
1 [ON] Chain of Vapor
4 [5E] Brainstorm
4 [UD] Donate

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [MR] Scrabbling Claws
SB: 3 [U] Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 3 [U] Red Elemental Blast
SB: 3 [7E] Pyroclasm
SB: 3 [MR] Chalice of the Void

How the deck wins:

Donate an Illusions of Grandeur. It is that simple. Once the Illusions is on their side of the field they can only Donate it back or win before it leaves play. (Technically they could Stifle its leaves play trigger, but that is what counter magic is for.)

Card choices:

Donate/Illusions of Grandeur: The game winning combo.

Counterspell/Force of Will: 8 card suite.

Merchant Scroll: This card can tutor Accumulated Knowledge (I will also fetch Brainstorm rarely) for more draw, counter magic in case you need to protect yourself or Illusions while it does its work, grab Fire/Ice for emergencies, Chain of Vapor for emergencies, or just to bounce Illusions for the win, Intuition to tutor up missing combo parts, and from the SB can grab your Elemental Blasts to do their duty.

Accumulated Knowledge: This is decent draw by itself, but combined with the power on Intuition (it thins your deck or can simply find an Accumulated Knowledge that will draw at least 3 cards) it can be a real beast.

Intuition: It tutors out my combo, finds a big Accumulated Knowledge, can find a Sapphire Medallion, counter magic at instant speed, find Merchant Scroll to tutor out a singleton, but find the last land I need.

Sapphire Medallion: Main deck only Brainstorm, Chain of Vapor, Fire, Sapphire Medallion, and Counterspell do not benefit from this card. It can make you win 2-3 turns earlier, makes it easier to tutor out cards while leaving mana open, and just allowed for some insane plays in multiples.

Fire/Ice: Its removal/reach in a pinch and can A) get me out from under a Trinisphere/Winter Orb for a turn or B) buy me a turn against some fat. Thanks to the fact it cantrips and acts as removal, it is almost always CA 0.

Chain of Vapor: It can bounce Illusions for an immediate win or remove some nasty card at EOT to let you go for it on your turn.

Some others possible maindeck cards:

Quicken: It lets me play Donate at instant speed, can be tutored by Merchant Scroll, and cantrips.

Stifle: It avoids the odd incident where instant speed removal allows them to kill donate in response to the gain 20 life trigger going on the stack.

Impulse: In multiples it is not nearly as good as Accumulated Knowledge (I am looking specifically at Intuition), but other than that it has major advantages, especially early on.

Sideboard:

Scrabbling Claws: Anti-Thresh tech. They actually a larger counter suite, but with less drawing power, so my goal really is to keep them away from Threshold long enough to power out enough of my win cards to put them on the defensive.

REB: Counters their counters for less than they pay (usually) as well as blows up Illusions of Grandeur.

BEB: For the Goblins MU. An answers especially for Warchief, Lackey, and SGC.

Pyroclasm: 'Cause Piledriver sucks. Alot. It is the primary reason my gobs MU is bad.

Chalice of the Void: This is for the combo MU. It is easier to drop this and thwart their attempts to bounce it than to try to counter enough of their spells to keep them from going off.

[Lukas Preuss]

Since you're splashing red, have you thought about Burning Wish? It makes the deck more flexible and would allow a single copy of Donate in the sideboard to tutor for.

Also, have you thought about Ancient Tomb? It speeds the deck up and the lifeloss should be okay, since you gain 20 life with Illusions. A game could go like this:
First turn: Ancient Tomb, Sapphire Meddallion
Second Turn: Island, Illusions of Grandeur
Third Turn: Land, Donate, win.

[C.P.]

Running Merchant scroll fo AKs is slow and outdated.(I should admit the deck itself is outdated, though) The Medalion does enable fast card advatage, but it is still quite slow in the format. If you want to stick to it, I guess you have to run things like Mox or tombs.

In old extended, Red splash was clearly a good way of fighting against counters, which we do not get to see as much as the old days. I'm not sure how good red splash would be compared to other colors. How about turning to the black for the better disruption and tutors? Lim-Dul's Vault and Duress seems like a fine addition.

[Di]

The deck really isn't viable, there are way too many things that just completely shut it down. Stifle, Disenchant/ Krosan Grip, Red Elemental Blast, Meddling Mage, any life gain, any instant removal, etc. It's just too weak of a combo, not to mention it is much slower than the rest of the combo decks in the format. You might combo around turn 4 or so, but they can pay the upkeep for at least 2 more turns, so at best it's a turn 6 kill. That really isn't going to cut it for a combo deck nowadays. Also, combo-control decks suffer from having a hard time dealing with combo and aggro decks. 8 counterspells isn't enough against a deck like Solidarity, and 2 Fire/Ice isn't nearly enough to deal with Goblins. They have Goblin Lackey and Aether Vial to put their men into play, and can pay the Illusions upkeep for a couple turns meanwhile bashing your skull in with Piledrivers.

If you want to turn this dead deck into a winning archtype, you gotta do 2 things:

- Make it faster. A LOT faster.
- Put those good sideboard cards in the maindeck. It's better to win game 1 than to have to fight your way back.
- Listen to the people who posted above me.

Frankly, I think it'd just be easier to make a less-fragile combo deck if you're aiming at a monoblue shell. Severence/Belcher comes to mind actually.

[Sherman]

Im a big fan of trix and I have been playing it for a few years now. In fact Im such a big fan that I made an account just to reply to this.

Burning wish is awesome in the deck. Then again I do play a lot of random decks and find myself wishing for bounce or artifact destruction fairly often as well as donate or pyroclasm.

Im not a fan of the tombs. There arent enough times when I can use two colorless and the damage can add up. This deck doesnt always want to just combo off really fast, it is a control deck with a combo win. Occasionally I do find myself wanting to combo quickly, but not enough that I want to add tombs.

Medallion may seem slow but it helps a lot reducing the cost of the combo from 7 mana to 5. Also allows for turn 3 intuition plus AK. It makes it easier to merchant scroll and still have counter magic open.

I recommend capsize, with a medallion or two out it is possible to cast it twice a turn and forces control decks to do something rather than wait to counter the combo. They are forced to use up a counter to stop it or lose their lands and not be able to counter it anyways.

As for the deck being viable, probably not, but the purpose of this thread is to try and change that if at all possible. It was a good deck at one point and has probably passed its prime, but if it was good once there is still a chance to make it good again.

[Cait_Sith]

For the moment I will stick with red because I would like to try burning Wish.

Tomb fits well with Chalice so I will try to fit it in. Diablos is right when he says I need to make it faster (with at least 1 Medallion I can win Turn 3, but I need options to make that more common.)

Capsize: And Richard Garfield said "Let there be awesome." And so there was. I'll try it out.

For now I could do -2 Fire/Ice -1 Chain of Vapor

+ 2 Capsize
+1 Burning Wish

I need to make cuts for 3 more wishes, so I will drop an island for now

-5 Islands

+1 Burning Wish
+4 Ancient Tomb

Any other ideas for what to cut Md?

[torgar]

I <3 this deck. Any attempts to keep it going, even at Tier 2, I support.

You only need one Capsize IMHO. You can tutor for it. Burning Wish will allow you to fetch those powerful SB haters. But I think I'd rather just have Pyroclasm MD and skip the middle man.

[Cait_Sith]

Okay, If I focus on a Wishboard then I would want Pyroclasm, Shattering Spree, a Donate, and what else?

[herbig]

I would skip the Burning Wish and run the max amount of Intuitions, cutting Illusions/Donate both down to three. Against aggro, where you will be racing them, you should draw one and need one Intuition to find your missing piece. Against control you will have time not to have to resort to Intuitioning for 3x of something and can instead go for the AKs. I would make it monoblue though, you simply cannot afford to miss a step against Goblins.

4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
16 Island
4 Remand
3 Illusions of Grandeur
4 Force of Will
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Merchant Scroll
4 Intuition
4 Sapphire Medallion
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Psionic Blast
4 Brainstorm
3 Donate
1 Misdirection
2 Chrome Mox

And Phyrexian Furnace is strictly better than Scrabbling Claws, unless of course you're boarding Mindslavers.

[Cait_Sith]

If I go MU then I could up the counter suite. I'd rather have 4 FoW 4 Counterspell and 4 Remand to ensure a nice supply of countering. If 12 is too much I could drop 2 Counterspells in favor of a Misdirection and something else.

[mikekelley]

Chrome mox is great in this deck, so is ancient tomb. When i played this, i ran four of both. They help a lot. Since in my opinion the intuition/AK engine blows, I'd drop AK for something else.

[dahcmai]

Krosan Grip would just scare the hell out of me if I was playing this. In response to the CIP trigger, grip Illusions. ouch...

Since I don't see much reason to play red at all in the deck why notjust go with Black for a little Duress action. It would spare you a quick death to Krosan Grip at least.

[herbig]

Black also gets you cards like Ritual, Nightscape, Spoils, ect.

Krosan Grip definitely owns this deck. Even counterable removal/bounce are something you have to work around, which delays your combo. I don't see this deck being competitive.

[burkey_boy]

is 1 chain of vapour enough to kill the illusions when you have donated it???

why not run a little more bounce? not only will it help you when there is things like millions of gobs around, but it can speed your win if you are about to die.

[herbig]

One ofs are meant to be Scrolled for to deal with certain situations, such as an opponent killing you before the upkeep wears out. Drawing them beforehand is usually not as good as drawing another counter or draw spell.

[Sherman]

Krosan grip and other enchantment destruction spells are why this deck does not work as a straight up fast combo. It needs to be a control deck because the combo can be disrupted easily unless you have counters to back it up.

This deck was good because it was a control deck that could win faster than most control. This gave it an edge over other control decks in the aggro match ups because it could control and win before getting overwhelmed.

In the current meta, aggro decks are way to fast for control decks and can even race combo. The only hope is to use control cards to slow the opposing deck and stall until you can combo on turn 5-7. Making this deck faster isnt going to work, with ports and wastelands running rampant, tombs arent going to do anything. Chrome mox might speed it up a turn but it also gets rid of needed cards.

The only option is to find better control to slow the opposing decks. This could mean trying a different splash, relooking over red options, or waiting for the new sets to see if anything good has come out.

If this deck is to stand a chance we need stop looking for speed and start looking for control.

[Cait_Sith]

I am working on the MU build now and I have had great results vs Control. Now if Control stopped sucking in Legacy I'd be good.

Note: No Aggro deck can race Combo. Instead they disrupt the combo just long enough to win.

Vs Enchantment destruction: Another option is Quicken for my Donates or the morph dude that counters a spell (good vs Split Second)

On Aggro: If you can get Illusions down by Turn 3 you should be fine vs Non-Goblins Aggro (Goblins is actually a very easy MU until they find Piledriver. And they are very good at finding Piledriver.)

Some good blue options: Stifle, Quicken, Propaganda.

[Tacosnape]

Chrome mox is great in this deck, so is ancient tomb. When i played this, i ran four of both. They help a lot. Since in my opinion the intuition/AK engine blows, I'd drop AK for something else.

Iunno about Chrome Mox, but QFT at Ancient Tomb. This lets you Illusions on turn 3 and pay Upkeep/Donate on turn four, assuming you aren't facing Rishadan Port that taps an island -after- you pay the upkeep.

[from Cairo]

Although I don’t have much experience with the deck I agree with what's being said AK seems slow as hell. I think that Chrome Mox and Ancient Tomb would be huge.

Other then Meddling Mage I see nothing that you really need to be Fire/Icing away, and I dont think Pyroclasm really is warrented enough to add a color. Your combo/win condition has you gaining 20 life, so that should help to buy you a bit of time, also the SB could be used to give you a few more tools against agro, Propaganda maybe. Overall it seems to me like adding Red, makes your manabase weaker and Burning wish -> tech seems a bit slow especially when you are already running Merchant Scroll which can dig for solutions in the main deck, and gets its cost reduced by Medallion.

I'm not sure how great Remand would be in the deck, part of its strength in Solidarity is that they are comboing off, and the opponent throws a cog at the combo at instant speed, with Remand the combo player is able to bounce it back to the hand and continue to combo off, also it's cantripping fuels Storm well. IoG/Donate is a sorcery speed combo and generally its a combo that drops IoG, next turn Donates. If the opponent say Disenchants in response to IoG coming into play and one Remands, assuming they don’t have mana to recast it, then the IoGs sticks, but the opponent still has the spell in hand so when the Donate player passes their turn, the opponent can simply recast the Disenchant effect, not as devastating, sure, but still leaves you out a combo piece and means you will be spending another turn digging. Force of Will is clearly a great piece of defense for the deck, I might be inclined, given that you are spending mana Sorcery speed alot of the time for Medallion, IoG, and Donate, maybe going with another free counter, Misdirection or maybe (really maybe, really janky) Foil.

I’d also include Deep Analysis for the deck, I tend to like it a bit better then AK. One it synergizes with Medallion even if you don't Intuition it out, you can drop a draw 2 for 3 mana, which seems better then AK sans Intuition, and with its Flashback that is 4 cards for 4 mana, again without investing an Intuition into the mix; an Intuitioned AK under Medallion is 3 cards for 3 mana. With Ancient Tomb, Mox, and Sapphire Medallion it seems like you could accelerate into it fairly reliably. Obviously if you want to use Intuition for it, its very powerful, you get one in hand and two in grave, the two alone gaining you 4 cards for 4 mana, and then leaving you with another to hard cast.

This is actually where I feel like Foil could prove to be *not horrible*, as pitching a Flashback card like Deep Analysis and an island to Foil, while not great, is sort of tech, you ditch 3 to counter, but for 1-2 mana (if you have a Medallion of not) the following turn you get to draw 2 back. Regularly the life loss from DA is fairly steep, but the deck is built around gaining another 20 life, so its easier to rationalize the loss of 3 really, you have 40 life to throw around before you have to win.

That being said I might propose the following design as a skeleton:

Lands 23:
19 Island
4 Ancient Tomb

Spells 37:
4 Force of Will
4 Chrome Mox
4 Intuition
4 Sapphire Medallion
4 Brainstorm
3 Merchant Scroll
3 Deep Analysis
3 Illusions of Grandeur
3 Donate
2 Foil
2 Repeal
1 Dematerialize

The only other real changes that are here are removing the fetch lands. If going mono-blue there is no reason for them, the deck thinning is nearly irrelevant, and though the 1 damage isn’t much of a hit for a free shuffle, the fact that they can be Stifled (and also sort of relevant cannot be discarded to Foil) seems like it out weighs what they would add. I upped the land count to 23 because the mana curve is a tad higher with Deep Analysis and gives you one more land to compensate for the fact you may have to pitch one to Foil.

I thought maybe trying a 1-of Dematerialize may be worth it, it can be Intuitioned out and clearly will end up being quite pricey as an opponent will not hand it to you, but with a Medallion and a Tomb or Mox out its not that unbelievable that you could pay the 6-7 for it on turn 5ish. Again it seems, even if very expensive, worth a 1-of to combine with Intuition much in the same way Cait_Sith considered adding Capsize to synergize with the Merchant Scroll tutor engine; both overpriced, but when you have the resources and need the bounce its there (obviously Dematerialize can just as easily be Merchant Scrolled out if you have that tutor at your disposal). Repeal seems like another good option for Meddling Mage, and can serve as a quick stall mechanism versus lots of deck, and it cantrips, seems like a very solid bounce spell for such situations. Both bounce spells can also be used to return IoG to one’s hand if the opponent has the resources to keep paying for it, and you want them dead.

Anyway just an idea on some possible modification that may help. Legacy seems to have alot of viable combo out there that is both fast and consistant, so I'm not really sure how well Illusions/Donate would fit in such a faster format, but I suppose it's worth playing with the idea anyway.

[Radley]

If you want to turn this dead deck into a winning archtype, you gotta do 2 things:

- Make it faster. A LOT faster.
- Put those good sideboard cards in the maindeck. It's better to win game 1 than to have to fight your way back.
- Listen to the people who posted above me.

Frankly, I think it'd just be easier to make a less-fragile combo deck if you're aiming at a monoblue shell. Severence/Belcher comes to mind actually.

Or make the deck slower? Add trinisphere and/or chalice of the void. burning wish is ok so you have a better chance of getting what you need although intuition might be enough.

[Maverick676]

Or make the deck slower? Add trinisphere and/or chalice of the void. burning wish is ok so you have a better chance of getting what you need although intuition might be enough.

Yes, trinisphere has such savage synergy with sapphire medallion and FOW. What would making the deck slower accomplish, other than causing more match loses?

[Cait_Sith]

My current MU list:

// Lands
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
14 [8E] Island (4)

// Spells
4 [U] Counterspell
3 [IA] Illusions of Grandeur
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [NE] Accumulated Knowledge
4 [HL] Merchant Scroll
3 [TE] Intuition
4 [TE] Sapphire Medallion
1 [ON] Chain of Vapor
4 [5E] Brainstorm
3 [UD] Donate
4 [RAV] Remand

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [U] Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
SB: 3 [6E] Recall
SB: 4 [WL] Phyrexian Furnace

Some notes: The synergy of Intuition/Fetchlands ---> Accumulated Knowledge is strong. However, I will try out Deep Analysis. My big complaint against is it is a sorcery, so I cannot keep my options as open as I would like during my opponents turn. Also, Flashback cost is NOT affected by Sapphire Medallion.

Remand: Sure, it doesn't deal with the spell permanently, but it buys me time and digs deeper into my library (not to mention it is affected by the Medallion) Another choice along these lines would be Mana Leak, but I would lose the option of Remanding my own spells for a cantrip effect.

Counterspells: I am probably going to drop 1-2 of these. I will probably cut 1 for Misdirection.

Recall: Works well with Accumulated Knowledge (after you hit at least 2 in the yard) and can get back important spells that were discarded/countered, repeat the combo if needed, and has synergy with Medallion.

BEB: I am thinking of making these all Propaganda as I have only sided them in once.

[vigilante]

With both Trix and Stasis decks currently under discussion in N & D, it's probably about time I confess to playing this deck once upon a time...

4 Impulse
4 Spoils of the Vault
4 Lim-Dul's Vault
4 Brainstorm
4 Donate
4 Illusions of Grandeur
4 Force of Will
4 Dark Ritual
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Lotus Petal
4 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
4 Bayou
4 Forsaken City
4 Polluted Delta

SB: 4 Chronatog
SB: 4 Root Maze
SB: 4 Stasis
SB: 3 Duress

Keep in mind that this was years ago...I think Spoils of the Vault was about a week old when I threw the deck together (and hence, every man and his dog thought it was the greatest. thing. ever.). I haven't bothered to update card choices with new technology -- ie. anything printed since Mirrodin -- as I haven't even thought about the deck since I last played with it. It took second in a tourney way back when, only losing to 10-land Stompy (with maindeck Naturalizes).

The idea is obviously to draw into/tutor for combo pieces, then play them out quickly. That's pretty much all the deck has....card draw, tutoring, acceleration, and combo. Yes, there's 4 Forces in there somewhere, but you can hardly count on 4 Forces as reliable protection. I sideboarded Duresses just to make myself feel better about the maindeck being so lacking in disruption/protection.

The transformational sideboard is what I was most proud of....and I'm still pretty proud of it to this day. I figured that Trix and Stasis have pretty much the same needs.....they need to assemble their combo pieces quickly, then play them out ASAP. The UBg shell seemed to suit both decks pretty well (admittedly, green adds nothing significant to the Trix half of the deck other than ESG, but it was absolutely necessary for the transformational Stasis sideboard. ESG + Root Maze is teh awesome).

Now, I'm certainly not suggesting that this is the way Trix should be built (Stasis either, for that matter), but I thought the quirky search/acceleration shell with transformational combo win condition might interest some people.

[MGB]

Ancient Necro, I know, but this was the most appropriate thread regarding this concept I could actually find by googling "Donate site:mtgthesource.com".

Now that Demonic Pact has been spoiled in the new set, what if we were to resurrect the Donate-Trix concept with Pact too and make a UB Trix deck?


4 Donate
4 AEther Tradewinds
4 Demonic Pact
2 Illusions of Grandeur

4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Lim-Dul's Vault
4 Ponder
4 Thoughtseize
4 Preordain

4 Underground Sea
3 Island
2 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
3 City of Traitors

[kombatkiwi]

Ancient Necro, I know, but this was the most appropriate thread regarding this concept I could actually find by googling "Donate site:mtgthesource.com".

Now that Demonic Pact has been spoiled in the new set, what if we were to resurrect the Donate-Trix concept with Pact too and make a UB Trix deck?


4 Donate
4 AEther Tradewinds
4 Demonic Pact
2 Illusions of Grandeur

4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Lim-Dul's Vault
4 Ponder
4 Thoughtseize
4 Preordain

4 Underground Sea
3 Island
2 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Flooded Strand
3 City of Traitors

I think Aether Tradewinds is probably a bit too deep, something like Void Snare or Chain of Vapor would be more realistic.

[MGB]

I think Aether Tradewinds is probably a bit too deep, something like Void Snare or Chain of Vapor would be more realistic.

Makes sense. So you think this list -4 Tradewinds +4 Chain of Vapor is a viable combo deck that is worth playing above ANT/Omnitell? I mean, is there a good reason to try Donate+Pact over just Show and Tell+Omniscience? I think if we are going to run this kind of combo, the benefit, obviously, is that Pact is "good" on its own in that it does things good for you before you get the "combo". And hopefully, you will be drawing into your Donate before you have to use the "lose game" clause. Whereas Omniscience without Show and Tell is basically a blank card until you get that Show and Tell.

[Asthereal]

Whereas Omniscience without Show and Tell is basically a blank card until you get that Show and Tell.
This could be said for Donate though. Does a fair amount of nothing before you find a Pact or Illusions.

Trix is very slow and very disruptable. The new toy does have its merits, but i don't think it'll make this old boy playable again. No harm in trying though. :cool:

[rufus]

...
Now that Demonic Pact has been spoiled in the new set, what if we were to resurrect the Donate-Trix concept with Pact too and make a UB Trix deck?
...

The Puca's Mischief approach appeals to me:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?9441-Deck-Trixorz