Battle of Wits!

From the Battle of Wits draft thread, it got me interested in putting one together to see how it looks and plays (MWS for me since the deck would be ridiculously expensive). I figured a community deck building thread built around the card would be fun to put together. I know Fakespam put one together a while back and played it in some tournaments so hopefully he can come in a help the deck out.

Rules for posting

1) Please, when recommending a card, include how many.

2) When recommending a card, include a reason for its inclusion. I will ignore all posts of just a card suggestion.

3) No lists. The purpose of this thread is to build the deck as a community. I am sure all of us could throw together a list of legacy staples.


I will update the opening post and keep the updated list on each page.

So....

4 Battle of Wits

Decklist (so far)
UWgb Battle of Wits

Lands
4 City of Brass
4 Tundra
4 Tropical Island
4 Savannah
4 Underground Sea
4 Bayou
4 Scrubland
4 Flooded Strand
4 Windswept Heath
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Academy Ruins
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Dust Bowl
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Secluded Steppe
1 Barren Moor

Acceleration / Mana Fixing
4 Pentad Prism
4 Coalition Relic

Draw
4 Ancestral Visions
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Brainstorm
4 Jace
4 Fact or Fiction
3 Deep Anal

Tutors
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Mystical Tutor
4 Wordly Tutor
4 Sterling Grove
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Idyllic Tutor
4 Trinket Mage
4 Intuition
4 Gifts Ungiven

Counters
4 Force of Will
4 Muddle the Mixture
4 Counterspell
4 Forbid
4 Spell Snare

Discard
4 Cabal Therapy

Removal / Creature Control
4 Engineered Explosives
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Path to Exile
4 Condemn
4 Vedalken Shackles
4 Pernicious Deed
4 Krosan Grip
4 Humility
4 Moat
4 Wrath of God
1 Exile into Darkness

GY Hate
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus

Recursion
4 Life from the Loam
4 Crucible of Worlds
3 Replenish
1 Regrowth
1 Reclaim

Multi-purpose
4 Bant Charm

Creatures
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Eternal Witness
4 Trinket Mage
4 Vendilion Clique
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Sower of Temptation
4 Academy Rector
1 Etched Oracle
1 Gigapede
1 Shriekmaw
1 Genesis
1 Squee
1 Wonder

Other Win Cons
4 Decree of Justice
4 Elspeth
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Mindslaver

Win
4 Battle of the Wits

4x enlightened tutor

Fetches battle of witts and is in a nice color of white being a good compliment and control color for battle of witts.

4 Force of Will - Otherwise, you lose to Belcher.

How about 4 Academy Rector: splashable and able to get the BoW into play.

4 Counterspell

Helps Force of Will in the counter department.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jak.

4 Battle of Wits

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Come to think of it, how about 3 Battle of Wits and 4 Golden Wish instead? :laugh:

4x Sensei's diving top.

I mean, with the amount of tutoring/draw/fetch effects in the deck I can see it helping out a lot. We run 4 because we're not worried about multiples :P (Wow, this deck is looking like thresh already...OH NO)

EDIT: Golden wish is too much fail D: I wish it cost three, because then it'd be playable. More than burning/living because of the increased target count, but still reasonable to use.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valtrix

4x Sensei's diving top.

I mean, with the amount of tutoring/draw/fetch effects in the deck I can see it helping out a lot. We run 4 because we're not worried about multiples :P (Wow, this deck is looking like thresh already...OH NO)

EDIT: Golden wish is too much fail D: I wish it cost three, because then it'd be playable. More than burning/living because of the increased target count, but still reasonable to use.

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I agree Golden Wish sucks, but I mean, we're talking about Battle of Wits here! :laugh: I don't think it's that viable. It would be so slow to start with, I don't think the :3::w::w: would take so long to get. You could run City of Traitors or something. :wink:

I've always used 4x brainspoil. Transmutes for battle, and doubles as removal (albeit a little slow for that purpose)

4x Idyllic Tutor. Since we play 230+ cards.

4x Spoils of the Vault

But really,

4 x Life from the Loam

4 brainstorm - the deck is blue.

4 Ponder
4 Portent

4 Fact or Fiction

More draw is good.

I'll update the opening post with the cards added.

4 Yoked Plowbeast

How color intensive do we want to be? I think that if we're going to bother putting a list together we need to decide how many colors it should be. So far we need :w::u::u::b::b::g:, which seems too intensive with over 200 cards, even with good fixing.

140x Relentless Rats.

(Someone actually played Battle of Wits in a Big Arse tournament back in the day.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MTG-Fan

4 Yoked Plowbeast

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...

I agree with Valtrix and I think limiting it to UWx would be a good idea. Now the question is to go with black or green or red.

Mystical Tutor. You are running blue and it can fetch Idyllic/Enlightened Tutor. It could also get Replenish which would be hot with dredging Loam or Attunement. Sterling Grove could also get BoW or protect it and looks like its in color if you are gonna run Loam.

I think it should probably be straight UW. They're going to give the best tutoring/control, and I guess I don't see another color adding enough to compensate the possible inconsistency, but maybe I'm wrong. (Green gives us goyf/sterling grove/grip/other/Knight of the Reliquary/loam)

Also:
4x Tundra (Obligatory)