[Deck] Infernal Bargain - A different view on Tendrils

Turn 1 IIIIIIII
Turn 2 IIIIII
Turn 3 IIIII
Turn 4
Turn 5 I
Fizzle IIIIIIIIIIIIII

// Lands
4 [B] Swamp (1)
4 [A] Underground Sea
4 [ON] Polluted Delta

// Creatures
4 [VI] Phyrexian Walker
2 [R] Ornithopter
4 [AL] Shield Sphere

// Spells
4 [SC] Tendrils of Agony
4 [MM] Dark Ritual
4 [MI] Lion's Eye Diamond
4 [TO] Cabal Ritual
4 [OV] Meditate
4 [TE] Lotus Petal
3 [PT] Cruel Bargain
3 [PS] Diabolic Intent
4 [OV] Infernal Contract
4 [EX] Culling the Weak

The deck is a lot easier to play than Nausea, but I would say I like Nausea more, just because it doesn't fizzle nearly as much. Although this deck has much more Turn1 kills than any deck I've seen in Legacy.

If I were you Roopey i wouldn't use the blue splash. It makes you vulnerable to wastelands. If you're really worried about the drawing engine just add in some night's whispers over meditates. It just makes the deck feel more reassuring if you don't run nonbasic lands. I also understand the blue splash could help somewhat with chain of vapor, etc. but mono black has ways with the mana excel to cast off a disk or keg game two. That said, you're decklist is looking more like a much worse nausea deck with the blue splashing.

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Originally Posted by Danarim

So, you have two turns for building a hand/board able to let you go off - three swamps, draw spells, rituals that work. Could you explain me how do you do it, mentioning that your only manipulation/search spell is 2x desperate search? I don't know if you realize, but drawing into multiples grids, rains, candelabras without bubbling muck, bubbling mucks without candelabra or whatever of that kind kills you, not mentioning simple situations when the 'working' cards you have are not sufficient. That's what is called 'lack of consistancy'. That said, I'm still very curious of your goldfishing results.

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Being that i am one of Rood's biggest play test partners, let me explain his deck seeing as he isnt good at comunicating well (usually a series of grunts and hand signals). The Defense Grids are due to the fact that we have a control heavy meta,(also i play Solidarity and there is 1 or 2 sligh decks). The idea is that droping a defense grid gives him turn 3, if he is going first, no chance to be interupted or burned seeing as his life is very very low near the end. He normally bargins first turn with a ritual to build hand or drops a candelabra. Second turn is noramlly a night's whisper or a defense grid depending on who he is plaing. Turn 3, the mana from muck is basicly an extra cabal ritual which combos out with candelabra. Its is good to start even without the candebra seeing as drawing into one isnt as bad as u think if u have the mana floating. The desperate reasearch are not used much pre-combo so much as mid combo when finding that last tendrils or the mana to cast it is neccerary.

As for the color on the build listed so far, the blue and the green seem consistant seeing as they can fight of hate rather well seeing as the hate from solidarity (- the gaea's blessing not that they are so hard to get around) also hits you.

@ lion's eye diamond
As much as it is nice to have the extra mana after a draw4, I dont like the fact that u sometimes have to ditch cards that might otherwise have been useful or leave behind a tendrils. Tested with a Rood build, i dont know if it is better in a turn 2 build.

@ mox diamond
Seems out of place in the blue build but in the green build with land grants seems like it would work well. Havent tested it.

@ Sideboard
I dont think death wish really belongs, u seem to have a fine tutor already, and even with diamond (which conviently leaves u 1 mana short of tendrils).
4 Smother
4 Naturalize/Chain of vapors
3 Plagues
4 xxxxxxxxx

.... Team King! Try new BK Joe!

-Exactly vanele. The whole purpose of the Grids is so you can beat counter/Sligh decks, seeing as there's no way a counter deck can stop a turn 1 Grid with Lotus Petals or Rituals, unless they get lucky enough to draw a FoW. Also, the Desperate Research can be used pre-combo to dig for Bubbling Muck if you have a candel or dig for dark rituals to get the combo going. But its main purpose is like vanele said, digging for a Tendrils if you don't hit one. That being said, I really think it should be tested in your build.

Post edited for clarity. Proper English ftw. - Zilla

I had not much time for testing and I'm totally screwed right now (after 7 hours of math/physics exams), but I'm glad to see the discussion is living, I'll answer the most important things.

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How does it do against aggro-control like Threshold?

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It's rather terrible. If they play R, it's very, very hard. If they play Meddling Mage, it's also bad. If they run Stifle in side, it's a disaster. Dazes are deadful to the deck. At least, there are so many versions of that deck that I'll maybe meet a winnable against one :).

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Burning Wish. It is probably the main reason to run Nausea over this. I have done some testing, but I haven't added red yet.

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I agree burning wish is amazing, and I agree it shows its power in a more colored deck, which nausea is. However, I think adding red for it, when we already have diabolic intent, is too risky - practically all the colored mana goes for meditate.

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Just wanted to point out that with my newest list (see a few posts up) I just won turn 2 Vs. Goblins with NO LAND. I like this deck a LOT.

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This time it's more like belcher :).

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Try to work red in for burning wish, fuck blue. Red gives you crazy goodies like gamble in addition to wishes.

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Gamble may be in fact nice, but I found meditate effective and I won't cut it easy. Only one way - we have to test more.

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The deck is a lot easier to play than Nausea, but I would say I like Nausea more, just because it doesn't fizzle nearly as much. Although this deck has much more Turn1 kills than any deck I've seen in Legacy.

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I have to say I'm a little confused. I'd never thought it has such 1st turn kill possibilities, and I'd never thought it fizzles that often. Interesting results, in other words. We're probably playing the deck in a completely different way, you're maybe spending too much of your efforts on trying to win turn1. I personally like waiting a turn just for dropping one land more and drawing one card more, when I see my hand isn't super-porno.

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I also understand the blue splash could help somewhat with chain of vapor, etc. but mono black has ways with the mana excel to cast off a disk or keg game two.

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That's terribly slow. Note that we're playing combo.

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The Defense Grids are due to the fact that we have a control heavy meta,(also i play Solidarity and there is 1 or 2 sligh decks). The idea is that droping a defense grid gives him turn 3, if he is going first, no chance to be interupted or burned seeing as his life is very very low near the end.

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Ok, let's threat is as a metagame slot (because it is). I agree the possibility of protecting you from either counter magic and instant burn spells is worthy.

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Second turn is noramlly a night's whisper or a defense grid depending on who he is plaing. Turn 3, the mana from muck is basicly an extra cabal ritual which combos out with candelabra. Its is good to start even without the candebra seeing as drawing into one isnt as bad as u think if u have the mana floating.

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In simple words - this engine has many, many weaknesses the culling one has not. I'm a bit tired with this discussion - I hope that some other player will point those reasons.

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The desperate reasearch are not used much pre-combo so much as mid combo when finding that last tendrils or the mana to cast it is neccerary.

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Desperate research has been proved suboptimal, as it does nothing for 1B more often than 50% of the time.

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death wish

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Rather low synergy with the draw4 and not easy to hardcast (the main reason I wouldn't run it). You can't play it turn 2 with no acceleration waste. Walker, diabolic for cabal ritual, ritual is a business in storm making, with death wish it would be rather bad.


And now for something different, some other ideas. First, chain of vapor is nuts. A main one is a response to a number of hate cards (meddling mage especially), and still isn't a 'wasted' slot. It won me games when I had an huge amount of mana acceleration and tendrils, but not draw spells. Secondly, I'm actually testing chromatic sphere as a cheap cantrip, that can be casted earlier and that filtrates mana. I'm still unsure of that idea, it's not the helm engine and 1 for 2 isn't that good, but the deck simply lacks of cantrips. For the burn problem, I've found zuran orb quite effective. Sacrificing your lands in resp to the deadly burn spells is free and it works, it might be a sideboard option to consider.
While I won't have much time this week, I did some goldfishing recently (for testing the sphere).
Here's the decklist:

Draw4 v.1.03

Main:
4 Bayou
6 Swamp
2 Polluted Delta (yes, it's not THAT bad as I thought)

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Culling the Weak
4 Lotus Petal
2 Mox Diamond (it still works well, especially with chain)

4 Cruel Bargain
4 Infernal Contract
3 Meditate
3 Diabolic Intent

4 Phyrexian Walker
4 Shield Sphere
2 Ornithopter
1 Chromatic Sphere

4 Tendrils of Agony
1 Chain of Vapor

Sideboard:
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Chain of Vapor
4 Zuran Orb
4 Defense Grid?

And the results:

T1 I
T2 IIIIIIIIII
T3 III
T4 IIIII
T5 II
Fizl/Tdead IIIIII

The T5 and some T4 were the result of fizzling after playing meditate. Fizl - variously, from totally crap hands to tendrils for 18 and not drawing anything interesting for a couple of turns.

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Originally Posted by Danarim

Ok, let's threat is as a metagame slot (because it is). I agree the possibility of protecting you from either counter magic and instant burn spells is worthy.

Sideboard:
4 Defense Grid?

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Threshold decks/Control decks and Sligh decks are heavily used in the format. If you look in Top decklists you can see there's alot of Threshold/Burn decks taking the top places in tournaments. It seems worthy to me to MD them you get it out turn one against them and let them cry. Then you can get out your combo next turn without breaking a sweat.

Shouldn't you be packing answers to Chalice of the Void? Chalice of the Void for 0 is the sh!t against this deck and I'm not seeing anything to circumvent it. How about Echoing Truth in the SB?

Ok what about this deck vs iggy pop? If we all admit this deck isnt as good as nausea and if its not as good as iggy pop then why would I play it?

Iggy Pop does have LED and boy does it carry the deck. Ill Gotten Gains is a house and maybe adding it to the deck would improve the deck. Maybe it wouldnt fizzle out so much.

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Shouldn't you be packing answers to Chalice of the Void? Chalice of the Void for 0 is the sh!t against this deck and I'm not seeing anything to circumvent it. How about Echoing Truth in the SB?

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I run actually a main Chain of Vapor and three in the SB. Echoing Truth is strictly inferior.

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If we all admit this deck isnt as good as nausea and if its not as good as iggy pop then why would I play it?

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I don't think it's the proper time to tell if everybody says it's worse than nausea or not. Nausea has a huge topic that counts 20 pages (and it's not the only one that has been), and it's in the 'open legacy' category. That means people have already worked on it a nice time, trying to build an optimal decklist, and a strategy how to play it. Here, it's 'new and developmental', note that the decklist changed much since it was created, and we're talking of time counted in days. When I played Nausea the first time (it was certainly a worse build than the actual ones), I was fizzling more often than killing in summary, and with a terribly late average time. Now we have a good decklist and we now how to play it. Nobody's trying here to tell you 'run this over Nausea' (maybe except Roodmistah, but he's speaking of a different deck), we're just working on using the possibilities of the engine. I don't believe the results I posted yesterday to be really bad, and I don't think we have already done all the job.
The reason you should maybe play it - improvement.

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Iggy Pop does have LED and boy does it carry the deck. Ill Gotten Gains is a house and maybe adding it to the deck would improve the deck. Maybe it wouldnt fizzle out so much.

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Let's try. What would the Ill-Gotten choice be? I believe draw4/(tendrils)+cabal ritual+cabal ritual enabler. It gives draw4 + 3 mana for 5 mana, in other words it allows to continue the gameplan with really big chances to win, for 5 mana. But I don't think it's stricly better than having a draw4 instead of Ill-Gotten - that gives draw4 + 2 mana for 5 mana and is much, much more stable, just because you can play it in much more situations, with no grave dependency, and no 'discard your tendrils' drawback.

I agree, Ill-Gotten gains seems a little out of focus, and allows the random anti-graveyard hate to hit you as well. I'd rather have a draw 4 that's always useful (baring sitting at 1 life).

How's the Meditates been treating you guys? I kinda liked the ability to only do a "semi-combo turn" (tm), and having a not lethal Tendrils fill you up so you could survive next turn and then win with a relative small one. Meditate kinda disable that option, but if the gas it provides overweight it, I suppose it's goody. ;)

Now, I'm a little tired after getting home from work, but could Reaping the Graves do something interesting? Might be too costly, but just thought it was a kinda interesting way to easily make Tendrils lethal and be able to always have creatures to sac.

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Originally Posted by Danarim

4 Bayou

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Forgive me, but isn't that underground Sea?

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Forgive me, but isn't that underground Sea?

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Sure it is.

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How's the Meditates been treating you guys? I kinda liked the ability to only do a "semi-combo turn" (tm), and having a not lethal Tendrils fill you up so you could survive next turn and then win with a relative small one. Meditate kinda disable that option, but if the gas it provides overweight it, I suppose it's goody. ;)

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Meditate rocks. Hard. It allows to focus on a 2nd turn kill, because of the speed it gives. Yes, sometimes it fizzles and the drawback causes a 4th/5th turn kill instead of an earlier one, but the advantages are simply not comparable. It's worth playing, I'm also curious how your goldfishing results would be.

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Now, I'm a little tired after getting home from work, but could Reaping the Graves do something interesting? Might be too costly, but just thought it was a kinda interesting way to easily make Tendrils lethal and be able to always have creatures to sac.

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It's just another spell that sounds good when you already have storm, mana, cards and graveyard, but doesn't improve the deck's consistancy. The mana cost is also too high.

So I have been toying with this deck a little, and realized it was missing something. I don't know if I have found what it was missing, but I did make a few changes to the list.

-1 Tendrils
-1 Chromatic Sphere
-1 Chain of Vapor

+3 Skulltap

Now before any of you flame me for taking out the Chain of Vapor, I already realize it was a mistake, so shut the hell up. Anyway, Skulltap adds another cheap draw element to the deck, without the drawback of loss of life. With this addition and with all of the other card drawing and tutoring, the fourth Tendrils is not necessary. The Chromatic Sphere just wasn't doing much for me. Another card I have considered in this spot is Senei's Divining Top. I have not yet tested with the Top, but I figured I would shoot out that idea to the masses. Anyway, as it stands, my version is the same as the list above with these changes:

-1 Tendrils
-1 Chromatic Sphere

+2 Skulltap

I am considering running Repeal instead of Chain once Guildpact becomes legal, or at least running it in the Board. Also, I have been considering Massacre as a sideboard slot. It can be good against Gro decks or Angel Control decks.

When I decided to build the deck, sadly, Lotus Petals were extremely tough to find, but were acquired. I still need 2 Bargains, but the first two were only 10 cents each, so I can cough up a couple of bucks to get the others.

My two cents.

Massacre is the nuts against white splash gobs too. Wipe your board for free?

Okay, so I have worked on this deck a bit more with a couple of friends. We tried adding more blue, but the problem with that was that you end up drawing too many of your mana spells in combination with your blue draw spells and cannot play any of your spells. Thirst for Knowledge sounded like a good idea, but for the above mentioned reason, was not feasable.

I have reduced the number of lands, increased the number of free spells, and added a few things. Here is the list.

Uno

3xPhyrexian Walker
2xOrnithopter
4xShield Sphere
4xLotus Petal
3xMox Diamond
4xChrome Mox
4xCulling the Weak
4xDark Ritual
4xCabal Ritual
4xCruel Bargain
4xInfernal Contract
3xTendrils of Agony
3xMeditate
2xThoughtcast
1xChain of Vapor
3xPlunge Into Darkness
4xUnderground Sea
2xWatery Grave
3xPolluted Delta

So, Plunge (with the Kicker, of course) serves two purposes, if it was not obvious. Adding to your life total is huge in this deck, plus digging deeper is amazing. It is strictly better than Diabolic Intent in this deck due to its versatility.

With all of the artifacts, the addition of Thoughtcast was a no-brainer. Two seems to be the right number. You do not want to draw the too early, because they are useless at 3, 4, or 5 mana, but at 2 mana they are good and at 1 amazing.

With all of the card drawing, three Tendrils is plenty.

Many may disagree with having 3 Mox Diamonds with only having 9 total lands, but for the purposes of this deck, it is more about the storm count, and if you are trying to go off on turn 1 or 2, playing Diamond over a land adds to storm, helps with threshold for Cabal Ritual, and gives you the option to play your land for the turn with a storm count of 12, which is all kinds of Tech.

The need for the removal of annoying things like Meddling Mage or Chalice for 0. Though Chalice for 0 is really annoying, it is still possible to work around it. You still get your storm count with Chalice on the table.

On to the Board. This board is based upon the meta around here.

4xDuress/Cabal Therapy
2xPerish
3xMassacre
3xPithing Needle
3xPhyrexian Furnace

The Duresses/Therapis are there for cherry-picking out Counterspells, Forces, Abeyances, Chants, Stifles, and anything else that could be detrimental to going off. Duress rarely whiffs, like Therapy, but the fact that Therapy Flashes back adding to storm for free, and can get multiple copies of a card makes it so that Therapy may be a better choice, but more testing is required.

Perish/Massacre for the Gro decks which run rampant around here.

Massacre is also good against WW, Dead Guy Ale, and any other random deck packing Plains and creatures. Massacre is in the board over Virtue's Ruin because it can be boarded in against creature decks that are not white, though this was a bit of a debate, and it may change.

Pithing Needle is a slot which I am considering changing. Yes it is good against Aether Vial, Goblins, and other things, but I don't seem to board it in that often.

The Furnaces seem better than Crypt due to the fact that they can be reused, and they are not a dead card in multiples, or if drawn early on.

Other sideboard considerations:

Echoing Truth, Repeal, or Recoil for additional bounce against annoyances in permanant form.

Brain Freeze for an alternate win condition is an idea with which I have been toying.

And of course, Defense Grid is a consideration.

Thoughts?

Im thinking Furnace is a bad sb card in a deck that wants to win in the first couple turns.

Why no chrome mox? It seems to me that culling the weak is not a good card; The reasoning behind this is it takes 2 cards to make it good, one of which is basically a dead draw. Unfortunatley it is hard to find good mana acceleration because wizards doesnt really like when people get turn 1 kills. Have you tested Doomsday? It would be awesome, especailly if you run top or chromatic sphere.

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So, Plunge (with the Kicker, of course) serves two purposes, if it was not obvious. Adding to your life total is huge in this deck, plus digging deeper is amazing. It is strictly better than Diabolic Intent in this deck due to its versatility.

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I'm afraid paining yourself for 4+ is intolerable in a build with 8x Contracts. An impulse with a drawback is not what we need. Playing Plunge for life is also unacceptable, in most cases it would be just 3 life for 1B and two cards! Remember that you need the creatures to feed Culling the Weak. Playing it with entwine is too expensive and stricly worse than just playing the tutor. Diabolic Intent has one simple advantage - it tutors for whatever you need immediatly, it can produce mana, provide an answer, rise the storm amount, draw cards or search the tendrils, and it will do it for sure, while plunging for i.e. chain of vapor is probably not a good plan.

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With all of the artifacts, the addition of Thoughtcast was a no-brainer. Two seems to be the right number. You do not want to draw the too early, because they are useless at 3, 4, or 5 mana, but at 2 mana they are good and at 1 amazing.

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While it costs 2 mana, it's ok, but so does Night's Whispers, that needs no blue mana. While it costs 3 mana, what will happen very often, it's terribly weak. That said, you probably have too much draw spells in your deck, by the way.

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With all of the card drawing, three Tendrils is plenty.

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You need to have one turn 2 after casting about ten spells, that's the goal, the probability of having a tendrils (when running three) with that number of spells played isn't high enough. Notice also that in some games you need a second tendrils to win.

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3xPhyrexian Furnace

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What matchup does it have to improve? It's really not a pressure for nqg.

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Why no chrome mox?

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It's 1 mana for two cards. Culling the weak is 4 mana for two cards + an additional card in the graveyard. And you're trying to tell me that the first option is better!

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It seems to me that culling the weak is not a good card; The reasoning behind this is it takes 2 cards to make it good, one of which is basically a dead draw.

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I found culling the weak rather insane, in soo many situations it's better than dark ritual. Ok, we all know that it costs two cards. But it's a part of the strategy - this 'sacrifice' allows you to run a terribly powerful draw engine, that fits the needs created by this card. The walls aren't stricly dead cards, they stops aggro decks for a while, they feeds also Diabolic Intent, they make storm, and additionally, they provide another way of killing your opponent with chain of vapor for big storm + tendrils (when you have no draw cards in hand or you can't use them).

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Have you tested Doomsday? It would be awesome, especailly if you run top or chromatic sphere.

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The deck can handle no stack that says 'doomsday, I win next turn'. So, it can be only used as a setup card while going off. But in that case, it's too conditional, you need a hand with really great acceleration and a draw4, in other words a hand that not needs doomsday to win.

Okay, so both myself and a friend ran different versions of this deck today. We both tanked. Round 1, I lose to G/U/B Gro, he loses to Goblins. Round 2 I lose to R/W Jitte + Burn, he loses to G/U/R Gro. Round 3, paired against each other. I mulligan to 5 both games and lose the turn before going off one game, and Tendrils for 18 game 2 and lose. I drop, then he loses to the Gro Deck I played Round 1. So this deck went 1-6 on the day with a total of 4 game wins.

I am all for trying a new deck in the tournament environment, since my rating has dropped so much since I was only playing once every few months, though I do test with friends. I think it is time to go back to the drawing board. I am not saying I am going to give up on the deck, but I do believe some changes are in order for this deck to become more viable.

BTW, my friend ran the build with Diabolic Intent, which did not seem to make much of a difference, except in the mirror.

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So this deck went 1-6 on the day with a total of 4 game wins.

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That is certainly not a success. First, what were your goldfishing results? If they were as awful as the games you described, the main reasons would be probably problems with your decklist, and maybe mistakes while playing the deck. If they were quite decent, then we should revise the sideboard strategy and put more weight on a matchup analysis.
It's not a surprise encountering burn and gro x3 is bad for the deck. What did the burn match look like? If they burned you before you went off, what can I say, more goldfishing at home ;). If they burned you when you were at 3-4 life while going off, that means zuran orb in the sb is necessary, it were suggested in this thread and worked well for me. I'm also curious what did the goblins to be faster than you? Do you have sideboarded something vs Pyrostatic Pillar game two?