8 Card Decks

[TorpidNinja]

One of the experiments I used to enjoy was creating 8 cards decks which could both defend and win in one or two turns (hence 8 cards so that you can draw without fear.) As an example, one of my faves was:

Channel
Black Lotus
Kaervek's Torch
Zuran Orb
Taiga
Mountain
Leviathan
Force of Will

The basic rules were no multiples of a card and no drawing out your oppenent. So! Can such a deck be created in the Legacy environment? If not, what kinds of decks would you create with the entire MTG cardpool?

EDIT! Some really fantastic responses, but I should have clarified something: when I mentioned "no drawing out your opponent" I meant comboing in a way that would win on your first turn or your second turn (hence the 8 cards so that you can draw if you're on the draw - and no cheap Ancestral for the win.) However, if you have no deck and can't draw, you lose as you would normally.

Though some of the decks built around the former impression are really interesting.

[Jaynel]

Island
Lotus Petal
Stifle
Phyrexian Dreadnought
Force of Will
Daze
Misdirection
Foil

[Nihil Credo]

Painter's Servant
Grindstone
Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors
FoW
FoW
Misd
Pact of N

[Sek'Kuar]

FoW
FoW



no multiples of a card

[Nihil Credo]

Replace the second FoW with either Disrupting Shoal or Commandeer, then.

[Raider Bob]

Dark Ritual
Lions Eye Diamond
Swamp
Painter's Servant
Grindstone
Simian Spirit Guide
Red Elemental Blast
Pact of Negation

This decks your opponent with 2x counter back up, this maybe drawing out your opponent so you could get this 8 card had also.

Raging Goblin
Burning wish - Hatred in the Sideboard
Lions Eye Diamond
Lotus Petal
Simian Spirit Guide
Mountain
Dark Ritual
Pact of Negation

[Team-Hero]

Blazing Shoal
Fire Dragon
Elvish Spirit Guide
Swamp
Dark Ritual
Nether Traitor/Deepcavern Imp
Berserk
Pact of Negation

[chokin]

Step 1: Find compact combo with a low total cc.
Step 2: Protect it.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit.

I think that 8 cards gives too much consistency :P. Whoever plays second is guaranteed access to all their protection and combo bits.

Maybe a 15 card deck to give some variation. Another possibility is to adjust hand size and/or life totals.

My friends and I occasionally play "Booster Deck Magic" where you buy a pack, shuffle in some lands(they count as Utopias that produce any color) and decking doesn't count. It's really random/funny for when the pack has Moonlace/BadCardX or no removal. It's fun though.

[Jak]

Step 1: Find compact combo with a low total cc.
Step 2: Protect it.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit.

I think that 8 cards gives too much consistency :P. Whoever plays second is guaranteed access to all their protection and combo bits.

Maybe a 15 card deck to give some variation. Another possibility is to adjust hand size and/or life totals.

My friends and I occasionally play "Booster Deck Magic" where you buy a pack, shuffle in some lands(they count as Utopias that produce any color) and decking doesn't count. It's really random/funny for when the pack has Moonlace/BadCardX or no removal. It's fun though.

Did that once with 2 other guys. I, of course, pwned by pulling a rediculous pack. It had Doran and Maw. Nuff said.

[Willoe]

We all agree that it's 8 cards. vs. 8 cards, right? In fact, you can combo like this:

1 Obstinate Familiar
1 Vision Skeins
1 Manamorphose
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Black Lotus
1 Force of Will
1 Disrupting Shoal
1 Pact of Negation

Double counter-backup as well as 7 cards in opening hand. On the play, you go:
Black Lotus, crack for RRR Manamorphose, draw your last card, fix mana to UR, leaving URR in your pool. Play Obstinate Familiar, play Vision Skeins, win. You can only lose against a deck that plays an obstinate familiar or Maralen Mornsong + removal to your familiar. You have counter backup in Force of Will, Disrupting Shoal and Pact of Negation as Shoal fodder as the most played card will most likely be black lotus. Another boring one:

2 Island
1 Street Wraith
1 Pact of Negation
1 Force of Will
1 Foil
1 Memory Sluice
1 Daze

Easy. Play an Island, play Memory Sluice and win with quadruple counter-backup. On the play, you mill the last card. On the draw, you have 2 counters as PoN and Daze won't work.

Comment, please! :D

EDIT: Huh? You can't die of milling? Then my approach would be:

1 Black Lotus
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Rite of Flame
1 Seething Song
1 Platinum Angel
1 Foil
1 Island
1 Street Wraith

This is ultimate lockdown. Except that my deck only has 1 counterspell.

[freakish777]

Behold the best deck in the format (maybe):

Glimpse the Unthinkable
Underground Sea
Black Lotus
Mana Drain
Force of Will
Pact of Negation
Street Wraith
Misdirection





EDIT: Huh? You can't die of milling? Then my approach would be:



I think the stipulation is, you can't target your opponent with a draw spell (say Ancestral Recall).

In any event, Memory Sluice loses to an opponent mulliganning down to 3 or whatever.




1 Black Lotus
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Rite of Flame
1 Seething Song
1 Platinum Angel
1 Foil
1 Island
1 Street Wraith


This should be:

1 Lotus
1 Show and Tell
1 Plats
1 Street Wraith
1 Pact of Negation
3 Other cards...

[THEchubbymuffin]

Dryad arbour
Force of will
Unmask
Reaper king
Pyrokenisis
Sliver Queen
Atogatog
Disrupting shoal

Simple. Play your land and beat for 1 a turn.

[DeathwingZERO]

Ball Lightning
Mox Ruby
Mox Emerald
Blood Lust
Berserk
Black Lotus
Taiga


This actually guarantees you win turn 1 on the play. I don't want an 8th card, can I trade it for a guaranteed win on the die roll?

Hell, toss in Pact of Negation, it can counter a creature spell or another single counterspell trying to take you out.

[Willoe]

This actually guarantees you win turn 1 on the play. I don't want an 8th card, can I trade it for a guaranteed win on the die roll?

Hell no, that's the fun! You can just add Street Wraith to raise your consistensy to 100%. The sad thing about if this was actually a format, people with most counterspells would won. Therefore (without any research-backuped knowledge) I think that a twist of freakish777's deck and mine is probably unbeatable.

Underground Sea
Lotus Petal
Glimpse the Unthinkable
Street Wraith
Disrupting Shoal
Daze
Pact of Negation
Force of Will

It's easy. Play Lotus, Signet, Glimpse, win. The reason why it's better to run glimpse is that an opponent with a mull to three will autowin.

How about an extra rule? Your sideboard may consist of two cards? Like in all other formats, the SB is 25% of your original deck size. Wouldn't that be great?

The SB for the glimpse deck would be:
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Obstinate Familiar

With this build, you board out Lotus Petal and Glimpse the Unthinkable. Play a Familiar, so you only lose to damage and removal. This can be a solid plan if the opponent has a sideboard too. Otherwise, it would suck.

Like I said before, discuss!

We should indeed run an 8-card tourney on MWS. How about we play 5/9 instead of 2/3. In fact, the games take only half a minute to complete. A player would know when he'd die.

[DeathwingZERO]

I'm really puzzled by the Disrupting Shoal selections. Going second (which is why you'd want more counters) means that you are pretty much stuck with hoping you can find a blue spell of equal CC to what you want to hit. Wouldn't that make it dead about 90-95% of the time?

I don't think any more than 2 counters (Pact and FoW) are necessary. If card 8 is your land, Daze is useless on your turn 0. If the opponents mana usage can afford the 1, Daze is useless.

I would say a deck packing Street Wraith, Force, blue spell X, and Pact would have the best odds. That said, what would you do with the remaining 4 cards to win?

[Giles]

Honestly I do not see the point:
Every deck should just be
Channel, Fireball, Black Lotus, Misdirection, Force, Pact, Daze, Volcanic Island.

[DeathwingZERO]

Actually, I think this might be the best overall:

Island
Black Lotus
Force of Will
Pact of Negation
Disrupting Shoal
Misdirection
High Tide
Brain Freeze

On first turn, you have access to ditching cards to FoW, MisD, AND have access to pitching to Shoal @ 0, 1, and 5 without losing the win condition, on top of Pact being online for your turn 1. Having the High Tide is just for pitch purposes and the ability to use Black Lotus as an anti-daze measure and still have the Island up for Brain Freeze.

Kinda think that the mill conditions fall under drawing out your opponent, though. With only 1 card to draw, anything that hits it makes the opponent lose on their draw step, seems no different than targeting them with Ancestral.

[Giles]

Kinda think that the mill conditions fall under drawing out your opponent, though. With only 1 card to draw, anything that hits it makes the opponent lose on their draw step, seems no different than targeting them with Ancestral.

If one could lose by Ancestral. It would really just be
Island
Ancestral Recall
Force
Misdirection
Daze
Foil
Pact
Disrupting Shoal
And going First would win every time. For having one more counter.

[Willoe]

Hey, load a deck up on MWS already! I'm online right now, with a new deck ^^ I've created a game, it's called "8 card decks only" and my name is Willoe.

EDIT: Oh, and I play with a two-card SB.

[DeathwingZERO]

If one could lose by Ancestral. It would really just be
Island
Ancestral Recall
Force
Misdirection
Daze
Foil
Pact
Disrupting Shoal
And going First would win every time. For having one more counter.

I'm a fan of the Daze into Foil chain, gotta admit I didn't think of that. I'm trying to figure out if there's any way around this, but I'm pretty sure there isn't. Good call.

[Willoe]

If one could lose by Ancestral. It would really just be
Island
Ancestral Recall
Force
Misdirection
Daze
Foil
Pact
Disrupting Shoal
And going First would win every time. For having one more counter.

Where's the Street Wraith? You can't be on the play all the time, but you could ensure that you'd draw your combo. Remove daze IMO.

[DeathwingZERO]

Daze moves into Foil, which is a stronger play than continuously pitching 2 cards per shot. With the cards he's listed, here's how it would go:

Play Island.
Play Ancestral.
-They attempt FoW
Play Daze (Island back in hand)
-They pay for it (ESG/SSG, lets give this the hardest possible scenario)
Play Foil (Island and Shoal gone)
-They attempt MisD
Play FoW (pitch MisD, doesn't matter)
-They run out of options (can't play Pact when they don't have permanents on the table to pay for it)

So you've got 4 active counterspells on your first turn, to their 3, more likely. If they are on the play, however, they have Pact as well. But this would literally have to be a mirror match, and as he said, first person to go wins. Daze and Foil thanks to the Island in play are actually the critical spells.

Overall, the weakest card in the deck is still Shoal. You still need it to hit exactly what you want to counter, which is typically FoW or MisD. At that point, you're better off with Shoal being "random blue spell" that can pitch to either of the others, which is far more versatile. And knowing you are going to win, Pact is obviously your strongest countermagic.

To be honest, I actually really like this type of concept. It is pretty much guaranteed that who has the most counters will win, but they also need to be versatile. On the play Daze isn't nearly as strong, but it's still an enabler for Foil, which still keeps access to FoW, MisD or Pact backup. Can't say that's too bad.

[Lego]

Island
Lotus Petal
Stifle
Phyrexian Dreadnought
Force of Will
Daze
Misdirection
Foil

Turn 1 Stifle/Nought. Turn 2 swing for 12. Turn 3, can't draw, lose.

I was going to respond to a bunch of other posts, but it wasn't worth it. If you read the rules carefully, it seems the following are true:

1) You CAN lose from not being able to draw a card.
2) You CANNOT mill your opponent's deck or force him to draw.

Quite simple.

[THEchubbymuffin]

I'm really puzzled by the Disrupting Shoal selections.

Atogatog + disrupting shoal > force of will

[Giles]

Where's the Street Wraith? You can't be on the play all the time, but you could ensure that you'd draw your combo. Remove daze IMO.

If you did you would quite lose. Since you lose a counter.

[Willoe]

If you did you would quite lose. Since you lose a counter.

Then what happens if you don't draw your win condition in your opening hand? There is a 12,5% chance that you won't. A 12,5% that could be upped to 100% at the bare cost of 2 life. You can mull, but everytime you do that, the risk of not having your win condition in your hand would raise with 12,5% With Wraith, you would NEVER have to mull.

What does your list look like ATM?

[DeathwingZERO]

Then what happens if you don't draw your win condition in your opening hand? There is a 12,5% chance that you won't. A 12,5% that could be upped to 100% at the bare cost of 2 life. You can mull, but everytime you do that, the risk of not having your win condition in your hand would raise with 12,5% With Wraith, you would NEVER have to mull.

What does your list look like ATM?

If they are on the play, they STILL have 3 active counterspells. Again, the ONLY time 3 counterspells isn't good enough to win is the mirror match, in which the player going first has Pact of Negation as backup. Right now they'd still have Shoal (pitching Pact @ 0, Daze @ 2, or Foil @ 4), Force, and MisD online on their turn 0. No deck can get around that.

EDIT:

As far as the decks go though, mulling is roughly the same as Ancestral. If you Glimpse or Brain Freeze your opponent before they get to draw, it's the same as hitting them with Ancestral (still). So I believe anything with library manipulation shouldn't be considered as a "win". Is that what the OP intended?

[Willoe]

Sorry for necroing, but this is simply too interesting (or maybe, I'm way too bored)

Since noone replied to DW0's post, I'm gonna do it.

I really like what you're suggesting: You can't die of not being able to draw the last card in your library. That makes new development. In that case, it's necessary to ban Street Wraith. It dangerous to raise consistensy to 100% instead of 87,5%

Of course, the game will end in a draw when both players can't do anything and not draw a card.

So, with this new rule, how will people build their decks?

Remember
-1 of each card.
-Props if you build it with 1.5 Pool. Slops if you do it vintage style.
-8 cards.
-No Street Wraith.
-You don't lose if you can't draw a card.