[Deck] W/x Parfait (Tax/Rack Control)

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Originally Posted by aedemiel

Punishingwaterfalls recently played a Wish version of Parfait.


@Cpt-Qc I assume it's yours?

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I made it for Cpt_Qc. It was a fun dono league b/c if PunishingWaterfalls went worse than 3-2 he would get a bonus. :laugh:

A huge problem on mtgo (i.e. fake legacy) is that you have to play trash like Retrofitter when Currency Converter is the Scroll Rack you should be running (one copy is 4 copies with Saga). It was a fun league, which had a shot of being a 4-1. The round 2 opponent deterministically loses g2 if Cosmic is used correctly with Wasteland, which would lead to a game 3...where a Pact-donating deck has an exceedingly poor matchup against a deck that can easily hit color reqs to pay with 5x Lotus Field (1x actual, 3x Saga, and 1x Map).

26 Land:
5x Plains
5x Snow Plains
4x Flagstones
3x Wasteland
3x Saga
1x Lotus Field
1x Karakas
1x Heliods
1x Castle Ardenvale
1x Plateau
1x Mesa

8 Dudes:
4x Timeless
4x Soli'dude

3 PW:
3x Karn

2 Enchant:
1x Humility
1x Land Tax

6x Artifact:
1x Lodestone Bauble
1x Zuran Orb
1x Expedition Map
1x Relic
1x Scroll Rack
1x Currency Converter (in real legacy, so swapped to bad card Retrofitter)

15 Spells:
2x Plow
3x March
2x Cataclysm
2x B Wish
2x Cosmic Intervention
2x E Tutor
1x Restore Balance
1x Sevinne's

singleton SB:
Overmaster
From the Ashes
Cataclysm
Thought Distortion
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Porphyry Nodes (He swapped out for Lattice)
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Tormod's
Relic
Liquimetal
Ethersworn
Angel of Ruins
Crucible
Scroll Rack
Hex Parasite
Cursed Scroll
Powder Keg
Cataclysm

A few good things to learn from the league:
-Lattice is a wasted SB slot. This deck has 4 slots of maindeck Cataclysm (2x actual, 2x Wish), so Lattice is overkill vs already deterministically dead opponents. Lattice is also quite poor without Sol Lands. This is a concept people really struggle with. While we did not roll Delver, I absolutely want 2x E Tutors pointed at Nodes. I also am very interested in Cosmic on upkeep -> last dude dies to Nodes -> Nodes to exile -> end step Nodes to play -> Nodes back to exile -> you can't play any dudes on your next turn oppo -> your end step Nodes is back.
-Shadowspear is not a good magic card here, but Zuran Orb is. Note that Zuran Orb is variance negative: it thins the deck with Flagstones and Land Tax, whereas Shadowspear cannot decrease the odds of dead topdecks. There is to say nothing of the Cosmic + Zuran Orb super-life lines of +4 life per land in play, losing zero lands.
-Lodestone Bauble at worst requires 0 targets to just replace itself. It is however harder to understand the role it plays when Currency Converter is not available. This is a high floor on Bauble, which can very easily combo rather nastily with Land Tax to re-up the "draw 3 each turn" lines later.
-As PunishingWaterfalls pointed out, you can opt for Ruination over From the Ashes...but given that this deck is quad-Cataclysm, I generally prefer to reduce variance by ripping dead topdecks out of my deck with FTA.
-There are effectively 5x Lotus Fields in this deck, you can cast Thought Distortion. Don't play Burning Wish in this format if you can't tutor out uncounterables.
-Don't play Moat; this card was only ever okay'ish when Oko was legal. Watch the league, see the battlefield superiority. These pillow forts were never needed, and would have impeded our ability to win the game.

I see. Perfect deckbuilding indeed.
I'll have to test it myself, but how does the deck fare when you don't draw your engine cards?

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Originally Posted by aedemiel

I see. Perfect deckbuilding indeed.
I'll have to test it myself, but how does the deck fare when you don't draw your engine cards?

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The engine is getting lands out of the deck to reduce variance. You've got 3x effective copies of Land Tax with E Tutor, Zuran/Flagstones, Timeless, and Cosmic + Fetch/2nd Flagstones/dying Saga finding Map with mana up. You also have (in paper) the ability to flush lands from hand with Currency Converter. Getting hit by enemy Boseju is also highly beneficial to the engine.

The deckbuilding error people make with cards like Land Tax is that although they recognize it as a card that can take over games by itself, kind of like Library of Alexandria, they forget how bad it is to ever contaminate their topdeck with the second copy at any point after that [variance positive]. This is a lot of how decks like these lose to their own construction. Land Tax-based decks are notorious for building A+B+C towers where piece A is Land Tax, piece B is Scroll Rack, and piece C is Mox Diamond. None of these cards are doing you favors when multiple are in play, and they're all rather poor topdecks down the stretch. Add on hostile Prismatic Ending target Land Tax, on top of all the Force effects (FoW, FoV, FoN), and that A+B+C tower is never getting built in this format...and you will always lose b/c you're trying to avoid drawing useless Mox Diamonds and Scroll Racks without the help of cantrips.

^all this is really bad, and adding nonsense like Moat or E-Bridge on top is just backbreaking. These are about the least trustworthy cards in legacy; they will never protect you b/c you can't defend them. It's all just more duds you have to draw through once the Land Tax all-in doesn't work.

The engine is the same as Standstill: variance reduction targeting our own mana. Pursue said engine with highly uninteractive endpoint [basic lands], and ensure all surrounding pieces work towards the engine synergistically - that way there's nothing to disrupt, so you're always making progress. The fun part about this being built to constantly spike the game with Cataclysm effects, because there's nothing quite as satisfying as choosing to keep a Lotus Field as our one land after it resolves. The kicker is that we don't actually care if Cataclysm resolves - it's all about forcing the opponent to bleed resources every single turn b/c...well...we've got better things to do than losing turns because we drew land.

As you watch the VoD or play the deck, just recognize that you don't need to do one specific thing to win. It really doesn't matter if it was a Land Tax game or a Cataclysm into the ground game or a Restore Balance/Cosmic game or a Karn game or a death by Saga/Timeless combat game...they're all the same thing, and their pieces all work towards the end you need. Figure out the opponent's deck and the gamestate, then identify the prison they can't escape and build that prison piece by piece in a modular fashion.

I don't even disagree with the direction of building that list from a competitive standpoint (except maybe the Burning Wish part) I just think it's funny that optimizing "land tax deck" meant stripping out 90% of the land tax parts and just turning it into generic monoW + Saga/Karn

I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit more about the Burning Wish building and choices? The WishBoard takes a lot of space in the SB (the KarnBoard too) and I often find myself in situations where I almost don't board at all.


I've been tinkering with a green splash for a few weeks now. It gives us Loam and Living Wish of course but also Sylvan Library and even Crop Rotation to some extend (more utility lands of course, but also more land filtering with Flagstones).

Living Wish package gives us:
— Utility lands like Bojuka Bog, Karakas, I can even see the Lotus Field or Wasteland in the board or something cute like Mistveil Plains...
— Anti grave creatures: Faerie Macabre, Remorseful Cleric, Endurance...
— Anti combo creatures: Canonist obviously, Reclamation Sage or Cathar Commando (since Ouphe is pretty bad for us...), Eidolon of Rhetoric and Archon of Emeria.

On of the keys to playing Burning Wish effectively is dictating how your opponent must play; they don't get to use skill, they don't get to have agency. The thing that makes that possible with Burning Wish is turning into a "must-counter...or else" card b/c it can threaten to find an uncounterable card. Things with keyword storm (Tendrils, Relay, Grape Shot), cycling (Decree), uncounterable (Verdict, Thought Distortion), etc... After that the targets should be game-ending effects, which again say "must-counter...or else." Now the way the deck is built, it plays 4 Cataclysm (2 actual, 2 Wish targeting 1x SB Cataclysm); but instead of flooding out on pointless extra copies of Cataclysm, the deck goes up on 2 mana plays. More than that, this is a 2 mana play you don't actually care about - your opponent is allowed to Daze it...and if they don't, you grab a Daze-proof Overmaster (you already have 2 lands to cast B Wish) and draw towards even more land drops to turn off Daze for the rest of the game.

^More than anything else, these two things are why non-blue decks will fail: they massacre themselves on Daze (particularly with their 2 mana play) and they can't clear the way for the spell they need to resolve.

The big picture here is playing as many Cataclysms as you can, without ever losing to the internal variance it introduces. At the same time Cataclysm needs to resolve, so you have to be vindicating blue cards from their hand at every point leading up to Cataclysm, and you need to maintain that level of forced trading as long as you can. The way to accomplish this is to attack the lands in your own deck so you don't topdeck them; ripping them out with Land Tax, Timeless, Flagstones, Map, Currency Converter, Mesa/Cosmic, and the SB From the Ashes/Angel of Ruins. This is the Standstill variance reduction mana engine, only this time the asymmetry is called Cataclysm rather than Standstill. The focus on uninteractive basic lands is the key to the strategy working.

On the green stuff, the most the color could have offered was the FoV/Kaheera exploit but unfortunately that doesn't work with creature type dragon. On Living Wish: we already can tutor lands with 3x Saga pointed at Map, and using a Wish to grab a land in the mid-to-late game doesn't really progress the game state or add pressure (it can't vindicate blue cards from hand). The only creature worth grabbing is Ethersworn (which Karn already gets); like Remorseful Cleric is fine, but again Karn and Saga already grab faster grave hate (which also cantrips). Ouphe will never live against this deck; it has 4x Solitude, 3x March, 2x Plow...and even if they have Mother of Runes + Ouphe, they won't have it after a Cataclysm. Ouphe is so bad that we actively want our opponents to lose a card and 2 mana on that Ouphe.

On Loam: more lands is not what we need, b/c the deck is so focused on ripping them out of deck. We're much happier going from mana development to Karn -> Crucible -> play Flagstones into Flagstones. We end up at the same place with Loam and Karn, except Loam can't vindicate blue cards from hand. Karn will however b/c it represents dead basic lands, and even if they deal with it, their basics are still living on borrowed time vs Liquimetal and March. Loam is also pretty questionable with so few Fetchlands.

On Crop Rot: kinda like Living Wish in terms of not progressing the game state enough, while also losing too much momentum when it does vindicate blue cards. You also have to be careful about not advancing the mana total in a deck with Saga and Lotus; like you can't cast that 1 mana spell until turn 3 at the earliest. You're not going to fix that green mana and have a Flagstones in play to sacrifice early on. The cost of that green mana, particularly early on is Savannah...which loses to Wasteland...which loses to the Daze we were trying to beat.

If you're running to Mox Diamond for green, you've added what might be the single worst topdeck in legacy at the price of $650 per copy. This also leads to regressive deckbuilding where people run 10-12 slots full of Mox/Tax/Rack, and they lose b/c it's too many pieces that do nothing in multiple and combinations like Mox/Rack is self-defeating. I understand the temptation to go turn 1 Mox -> Land Tax, but you are turbodead to the Ending you can't stop...and even more turbodead to FoV. You can't trash your hand size into trades like that, and also risk flooding out on garbage topdecks like Mox/Rack (not to mention the risk of being stranded with Saga as your only land). Mox Diamond is one of the most expensive ways to play a completely ineffective strategy.

On Sylvan Library: it's a very good card, even though you have to untap with it. The issue is that it requires Fetchland shuffles, and it requires quick access to green mana. We're already accomplishing the Sylvan Library thing decentralizing it across E Tutor/Land Tax and Currency Converter (off Saga). Fetchlands and Land Tax are not best friends, and again Wasteland problems with Savannah (which you need card type Plains for Timeless) leads to losses to Daze.

To begin considering green, they would need to print Torpor Orb on a land to balance Thassa; and honestly this card will probably be printed. At that point however, you would take green's ability to find Torpor-land and add blue + Dreadnought. The other scenario is that they might print keyword Plains on Torpor-land (which would be a really stupid idea), and so you'd just find it with Timeless, and keep not playing green.

Alright then.
Do you have a SB map?
At least for ANT and DoomsDay. The later seem near unwinable.

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Originally Posted by aedemiel

Alright then.
Do you have a SB map?
At least for ANT and DoomsDay. The later seem near unwinable.

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Against ANT you bring in Canonist, Relic, Keg, and probably Scroll Rack. Can leave crypt in the SB for Karn. -2 Plow, -2 Solitude. Can bring out another Solitude and bring in Liquimetal to turn March into Sinkhole.

The deck is not designed to beat Thassa, you'd only be bringing in Canonist, Relic, and option to bring in Liquimetal and Keg (just as with March, so too is Keg LD with Liquimetal). Similar boarding to ANT. Your gameplan will mostly be LD.

This deck is not built for combo speedrun settings (leagues); it is a $1200 entry point to the format which aims to minimize wasting money by building into UWr Standstill/Landstill while also teaching Standstill-relevant play patterns. If you're trying to build into a local meta infested by Thassa, you would start at Dreadstill ($2000) to hate them off the face of the format before picking up the UWr Landstill/Standstill pieces, and then spend about $400 to complete Parfait (Plateau is picked up for UWr, so you're mostly looking at Solitudes, Land Tax, and the brick of Cataclysms).

While the deck is built to stand on it's own, it's exists mostly as an interesting Standstill/Landstill sidestep. By itself this Parfait build is made to crush Uro midrange/FoW, Reanimator, Chalice/artifacts, DnT, anything with the card Dark Depths, Maverick/fair, Delver/Shadow/Daze, Elves (probably), SnT, discard spammers, Saga, nonbasics, PWs, Burn, mana denial, and some others. So while the coverage is like reasonable on its own, you do need to be able to build to efficiently into other decks to cover the gaps (mostly Thassa, since MindTwisters are going to get banned).

The purest use of this $400 Standstill/Landstill detour is to obliterate Post, Blood Sun (Lotus Field), BridgeWalker, and punishing people for meme'ing with Jokulhaups (Cosmic into nice PW backup plan -> Cataclysm). It's a cheap way to send an unequivocal message that such things are not allowed in this room.

It should be noted that Scroll Rack in the main had been updated to Currency #2.

I watched the video. The deck looks fairly strong (Round 2 Wasteland punt was unfortunate when opponent ended up winning by exactly 1 mana, 1 turn before dead). I think PunishingWaterfalls also missed how strong the Saga -> Map -> Heliod -> Saga line is. There were a couple times Map did little when it could have ensured inevitability through Wastelands and Meltdowns, especially with Sevinne backup.

I agree redundant Land Taxes are annoying. It was one of the things I liked least playing Land Tax decks, preferring to run few Land Tax and make up for it with Tutors. Scroll Rack at least has a built-in engine to mitigate drawing multiples, although it's card disadvantage alone (needs Land Tax or Counterbalance).

I think Fox has the right idea. As long as the format is full of Prismatic Ending and Force of Negation and Force of Vigor and Meltdown, you can't rely on artifact/enchantment engines staying on the board forever like they used to. In the Oko meta you could keep enchantments reliably. Since MH2 you can't. The sensible way forward is to expect them to trade, building in a way that you can trade profitably, recover, and eventually grind out an advantage. Minimizing redundant draws, cutting card disadvantage, hiding bad draws in the SB, thinning lands, and playing tech like Sevinne's and Cosmic Intervention all make sense. Steady grind forwards. Even if you can't use the namesake engine as much, at least you're not constantly losing to fair disruption while durdling the clock on Tax/Rack activations.

That's all fine vs fair decks. But what about unfair decks? Even the Jund MadVine matchup looked unfavorable and got lucky from opponent playing slowly. Is the deck overboarded for a fair meta? There must be at least 1 toolbox slot that's relevant less often than you'd play a combo deck.

Would a 3rd ETutor in the SB help vs Storm? +1 Deafening Silence? +1 Nevermore (more versatile for Thassa, random things like Sudden Substitution)? Without more hate (or tutor for hate) you have no agency in those games. Durdling with LD combos is not much of a plan, because they have plenty of time to draw more mana and win.

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Originally Posted by FTW

Would a 3rd ETutor in the SB help vs Storm? +1 Deafening Silence? +1 Nevermore (more versatile for Thassa, random things like Sudden Substitution)? Without more hate (or tutor for hate) you have no agency in those games. Durdling with LD combos is not much of a plan, because they have plenty of time to draw more mana and win.

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My thought exactly. Although I think a 3rd Tutor is probably too slow. I would lean toward several Deafening Silence and mulligan agressively towards them.

Nevermore isn't going to resolve, or you'll lose before the 3rd mana. Deafening Silence is relevant vs very few decks as compared to Canonist. In either case it's a -1 SB size penalty. The matchup would still be bad, and mulling aggressively into discard won't help the winrate.

The matchup will continue to be bad without blue cards, until they print Torpor Orb on a land - for everyone in legacy without blue. Even if you add 4x Angel's Grace, they're going to discard it. If you combine removal with SB Noxious they'll discard or counter it. You'd be better off with throwing at most 1x slot either on Torpor Orb or something narrow like Wheel of Sun and Moon...but again, it's not a matchup that is going to be winnable....and trying to make it winnable will cost you winrate against the entire rest of the format.

Brian Coval played a Mono White version of Parfait Here. The Deck Building is completely outdated and he made some mistakes here and there.

I've been testing the latest version that was posted in this thread. I really liked the "land epuration" playstyle. However, I have to say the wishboard felt EXTREMELY lackluster. Most of the time Burning Wish was a dead card.

The thing is, B Wish is both a 2 mana play and counts as copies 3 and 4 of Cataclysm without having to flood out on 4 maindeck copies...which is otherwise a rather large problem since Cataclysm makes the next one uncastable for a lengthy amount of time (on top of contaminating opening hands with a spell that is so many land drops away).

When you're saying B Wish was a dead card, how many times were you saying it b/c the opponent had already died to a resolved Cataclysm? The point of B Wish is more about making sure a single game-ending Cataclysm resolves, rather than overkilling an opponent who has completely failed to stop you (Karn/Liquimetal is that overkill).

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Originally Posted by aedemiel

I've been testing the latest version that was posted in this thread. I really liked the "land epuration" playstyle. However, I have to say the wishboard felt EXTREMELY lackluster. Most of the time Burning Wish was a dead card.

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I've found that with Fox's other Burning Wishboards too (UWr Landstill). I think you want 1 Sevinne's Reclamation or Council's Judgment/Prismatic Ending in the Wishboard so that you always have a live target, even when you don't want big haymakers like Cataclysm or Thought Distortion. Sometimes you're just in a grindy low-resource state and want to convert that Wish into a trade. I felt a lot better drawing Wishes in Landstill with that SB "fair" option.

You could also consider Gift of Estates (aka Wish for Land Tax, if you're in a low resource state where Wishing for Cataclysm doesn't make sense), but that may be too cute.

Watching some of the Bosh'n'Roll league, it is a pretty good example of every problem classic builds have. Such builds are reduced to hoping to roll combo that can't interact with the hate pieces. Otherwise you're just floundering without a proactive wincon nor do you have a valuable resource to attack...so you just sit there while your variance (dead & redundant cards) locks you out of a chance of winning. The deck also showcased the inability to handle Ouphe, Ending, and FoV.

Making 1 change to the SB for B Wish is fine, but it would likely cost you access to Ruination/FTA.

I would not call that a classic build. I’ve played the same list since the unbanning of tax with only minor sideboard changes. I’ve very much been in the “nothings broken so I don’t know what people are trying to fix” state of mind. Honestly I would expect cataclysm to be its own archetype as it’s the card you are trying to abuse.

The classic build is around 10 slots burned on Mox Diamond, Land Tax, and Scroll Rack. The rest of the deck doesn't really matter when you're self-sabotaging with this much variance. None of these get better in multiples, and they aren't particularly impressive in combinations of two; i.e. Mox and Scroll Rack is actively bad, Land Tax and Scroll Rack don't work so well without Mox enabling Tax triggers, and Mox with Land Tax goes horribly wrong vs any interaction (and if it's FoV, you lose the whole game).

It's one thing to do the classic in premodern, but in legacy you don't get the benefit of assembling the megazord [Scroll, Mox, Tax] vs Decay/Trophy, Ending, Kcomm/K'saga, FoV/GSZ for Ouphe, Karn - see previous paragraph about what happens when you can only assemble 2/3 of the contraption. Moreover, in premodern they have time to sit there drawing bricks (redundant copies of Mox/Tax/Scroll), whereas in legacy you can't be sitting around drawing duds while 1-card combos like Uro or PWs accrue irreparable value on the other side of the table.

The RiP/Helm, Isochron/Chant, and Ghostly Prison stuff is just window dressing. The building is on fire...a building built on Mox/Tax/Scroll - the classic.

The relaunch I made for this archetype with the Standstill mana consistency engine is the same deck as old Parfait, just with decisions that incidentally increased power while eradicating variance with synergy. Wrath of God and Geddon are the wrong spells, you play Cataclysm and Humility now...and can Burning Wish for an asymmetric Geddon [Ruination/FTA]. Cataclysm is Geddon and Wrath in 1 card (that also kills PWs), and you really don't care about the leftovers with Karn, Solitude, and Lotus Field all there waiting to finish the job.

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Originally Posted by Weapon X

I’ve very much been in the “nothings broken so I don’t know what people are trying to fix” state of mind. Honestly I would expect cataclysm to be its own archetype as it’s the card you are trying to abuse.

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Are you still getting a high win rate in Legacy with the old list? What's your list?

Like other enchantment/artifact-based prison & control decks, Parfait relied on the Legacy format running very few maindeck answers to artifacts and enchantments and many answers to creatures. If you only have to navigate around FoW and soft counters and a SB disenchant, it's not hard to assemble the pieces and take over the game. You could go quadlaser to overload their limited 1-for-1s while they draw dead removal and stare dumbly at noncreature permanents. That worked for a long time.

Now the format has shifted.
Prismatic Ending
Force of Vigor
Force of Negation
Meltdown
Collector Ouphe
Hidetsugu Consumes All


You can't just play an enchantment and expect it to survive many turns. For the same reasons, you don't see Solitary Confinement or RiP+Field locking down games anymore. Meanwhile aggressive decks got more explosive to punish you when you stumble. The old plan is just weaker in the current format. Adjusting the plan makes sense.

I watched Bosh's video. His build should have added Urza's Saga and include Zuran Orb and Shriekhorn in the package. Saga and Orb can guarantee you trigger Land Tax. Horn can mill your crappy cards off the top when you Rack. There could be something even better than Horn in that slot but I'm too lazy to look.

He also had a lot of pointless cards in the deck like Scepter and Ghostly Prison.

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Originally Posted by Purple Blood

I watched Bosh's video. His build should have added Urza's Saga and include Zuran Orb and Shriekhorn in the package. Saga and Orb can guarantee you trigger Land Tax. Horn can mill your crappy cards off the top when you Rack. There could be something even better than Horn in that slot but I'm too lazy to look.

He also had a lot of pointless cards in the deck like Scepter and Ghostly Prison.

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It doesn't matter if you're still in the abyss that is 10 slots of death by variance. You cannot play Mox Diamond any more here. Scroll Rack is dropped to a 2x called Currency Converter. Land Tax is no longer allowed to be a dead topdeck, you have to use E Tutor to act as the virtual 2nd and 3rd copy of Tax.

You can't tune your way out of the burning house. You have to address to 800 pound gorilla that is Mox/Tax/Scroll. It's as regressive as it is costly (Mox is what 600, Tax is 40)

4 Land Tax
3 Scroll Rack
3 Wrath Of God
4 Orim’s Chant
3 Oblivion Ring
4 Path to Exile
4 Enlightened Tutor
1 Solitary Confinement
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Zuran Orb
1 Humility
1 Blood Moon
1 Trinisphere
1 Ivory Tower
1 Pithing Needle
3 Mox Diamond
1 Mox Opal

2 Rest In Peace
2 Helm of Obedience
1 Goblin Charbelcher

2 Mountain
16 Plains

Sideboard
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3 Timely Reinforcements
1 Baneslayer Angel
1 Aura of Silence
1 Rest in Peace
2 Ethersworn Cannonist
1 Nahiri, the Harbinger
1 Council's Judgement

That’s the list I have posted on salvation. I swear I lost the opal for another mountain. To be fair I haven’t played much since COVID and the band taking off. I otherwise continue to stay the course. Blank opponents cards and have a toolbox that beats my opponents. Tax/rack is the recovery engine that combats the 2:1 I’m doing. If that goes on early great. In the end the longer the game goes the more assured you are of winning. Things don’t need to survive indefinitely, just long enough.

Your opponent has a Karn. You lose.

I don’t. But good try?

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Originally Posted by Weapon X

I don’t. But good try?

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No you do. Your entire deck in the face of 1 Karn is reduced to three copies maybe-removal spell. Meanwhile they have their entire deck to stop you from getting an O-Ring...or just killing it to instantly re-up the Karn. With that Karn passive in play the entire rest of your deck does nothing...no wincon...nothing. They don't even need to activate the Karn.

Now that's just the raging autoloss flaw, on top of all of the other things that break up your ability to assemble a megazord. You still have unacceptable death by variance from Mox/Tax/Scroll flood.

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Originally Posted by Weapon X

To be fair I haven’t played much since COVID and the band taking off.

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Enchant/artifact strategies dropped since pre-COVID. The Legacy format changed a lot. Your traditional list looks a lot better in a ~2018 meta.

You can't even count on things surviving "long enough". Opponent will Prismatic Ending, Force of Vigor, Meltdown, GSZ for Ouphe etc. before you untap. The format was forced to shift to more answers to deal with rampant Urza's Saga decks and Emry/Karn decks. Enchantment/artifact control suffered as a consequence.

Edit: BoshNRoll's video proved that. Mox often got 2-for-1d early. He never successfully assembled Land Tax & Scroll Rack and ran into a ton of dead topdecks (Plains flood, Mox, Scroll Rack #3). Bad draws meant losing every match vs fair disruptive decks, only beating storm. But Storm autoloses to 4x Orim's Chant + 2x Deafening Silence + 2x Ethersworn Canonist + 3x ETutor + 4x RiP + 3x Karn + 20x Squire... the Parfait part didn't do anything.

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Originally Posted by Fox

It doesn't matter if you're still in the abyss that is 10 slots of death by variance. You cannot play Mox Diamond any more here. Scroll Rack is dropped to a 2x called Currency Converter. Land Tax is no longer allowed to be a dead topdeck, you have to use E Tutor to act as the virtual 2nd and 3rd copy of Tax.

You can't tune your way out of the burning house. You have to address to 800 pound gorilla that is Mox/Tax/Scroll. It's as regressive as it is costly (Mox is what 600, Tax is 40)

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Don't get me wrong, its not like its suddenly a competitive deck with those changes but if you're going to play Scroll/Tax you may as well optimize the list. To be fair to Bosh, he plays what the viewers pay him to play so its not surprising he frequently plays lists that are suboptimal.

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Originally Posted by Purple Blood

Don't get me wrong, its not like its suddenly a competitive deck with those changes but if you're going to play Scroll/Tax you may as well optimize the list. To be fair to Bosh, he plays what the viewers pay him to play so its not surprising he frequently plays lists that are suboptimal.

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You cannot optimize your way out of losing b/c you ran 10 slots of self-sabotage with Mox/Tax/Scroll. If you fail to address those 10 slots you cannot compete in this format.

It is so bad that you can cover up the other 50 slots, because they can not dig you out of the hole you've made for yourself with Mox/Tax/Loam. There is no amount of tuning or experience or player skill that can overcome a deckbuilding error that profound.

If you want to play the classic, there's only one competitive choice you can make: only play it in Premodern.

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Originally Posted by Purple Blood

To be fair to Bosh, he plays what the viewers pay him to play so its not surprising he frequently plays lists that are suboptimal.

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True, although in this case the Mox/Tax/Rack was the suboptimal part. He lost to never assembling Parfait in any game, getting pieces removed early, getting 2-for-1d on Mox, Scroll Rack locking himself without shuffle effects, Land Tax without ways to force it to trigger, dead drawing redundant copies, or flooding on basic Plains.

Fox's build addresses all of those problems. It doesn't assemble Tax+Rack as often, but it also doesn't get blown out by fair decks in those ways. Thinning plains is big too.

So at what point in moving away from Scroll/Tax/Mox are you just better off building Mono White Stompy? Chalice isn't as good as it was pre P-Ending but its better than the 1 drops in Fox's list, wouldn't you say?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Purple Blood

So at what point in moving away from Scroll/Tax/Mox are you just better off building Mono White Stompy? Chalice isn't as good as it was pre P-Ending but its better than the 1 drops in Fox's list, wouldn't you say?

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Chalice isn't a good or reliable card (except vs decks where x=0 has text), and it leads to poor deck construction that gets hit by Wasteland...which traps you in the lose to Daze abyss. It's also not a combo to play Chalice and be drawing the 1 drops for Saga.

There's a previous post where I also explain how putting permanents into play that can't trade profitably vs FoV/Meltdown/Seeds/Serenity by recouping CA (i.e. sacrifice to draw) isn't effective. Super-Nuke the artifacts is a majority sideboarding strategy in legacy, that is probably only surpassed by super-nuke the GY and Surgical....so if you put out a Chalice, you are done playing permanent type artifact and enchantment...so now you're soldier stompy (tier 2, if we're being generous) or BridgeWalker (white here is worse than mono-red stompy shells). If you choose sorcery/instant, you now are a UW deck with Tomb & Chalice, that can't play 1-drops...and UW already has a massive problem with access to playable lifegain before adding Tomb.

In legacy if you're not playing an absolute diversity killer [Goyf-types, total hand destruction, or FIRE], it's a lot more important to pay attention to the bad things that can happen to you. Those bad things are going to come from meta netdecks, which means you know exactly this story ends. So we could play into blowouts/known strategies and also lose turns each time we drew redundant do-nothings like Chalice...or we could notice that all of the diversity killing clown cards don't work if they don't have mana...and when Cataclysm is the card denying the mana, they don't get to keep their PWs, and any dude they have left is already dead to spot removal, and March is able to mop up the rest.

^it's much more important to me that the opponent has to hemorrhage counterspells, every time I offer the trade. Chalice is not a must-counter, which means it is the reason my Cataclysm later on didn't resolve. If you're not on a tier 0, 1, or 1.5 deck you don't have the luxury of attacking irrelevant resources, especially if you also drive up your variance while doing that (redundant Chalice dead draws).

There's also the financial aspect of entry cost to legacy, and that concept extends to minimizing waste by building into an end-stage legacy deck while also developing familiarity with play patterns of that end-stage deck uses. Stompy deck pieces are expensive, they don't build into other decks, and you certainly don't develop non-Stompy player skill.

It is very challenging to auto-lose with this deck b/c your opponent needs to own 4x Usea and be on Thassa. People who play non-Doomsday Thassa cannot succeed in paper weeklies b/c other players Leyline-rage them out of the room for you. The only other thing this deck cares about is banned cards Mind Twist and Timetwister, so we already know what's going to happen to Day's and Echo. Outside of those things, it's very hard to not cash with this deck. Also, this deck murders budget legacy. You do not want to play DnT, Shadow, Stompy, fair dudes, discard tribal, Reanimator, SnT, Depths, Lands, Post, Elves, Delver, Uro, etc anywhere near this deck.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Purple Blood

So at what point in moving away from Scroll/Tax/Mox are you just better off building Mono White Stompy? Chalice isn't as good as it was pre P-Ending but its better than the 1 drops in Fox's list, wouldn't you say?

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There are a lot of good 1s to give up:
Swords to Plowshares - Must go up to 4x March 4x Solitude and still lose 1 mana 1-for-1 vs big stuff like Murktide

Enlightened Tutor toolbox

Expedition Map toolbox (no Lotus Field -> cut Cataclysm too?)

Urza's Saga toolbox (can't reliably run many 1s and 0s with Chalice, maybe 2 targets total)

Land Tax - Even though there's only 1 copy, ETutor makes 3 virtual copies when you need it. There's also 1 Scroll MD + 3 virtual Scroll SB (Karn). Chalice means 0 Land Tax and then 0 Scroll, so you are fully off Parfait and have no late game card advantage.

Losing 3 tutor toolboxes means much more draw variance (already a problem with Stompy). Going down to 0 Land Tax + 0 Scroll means even less card selection and no card advantage. Then more variance by adding Ancient Tomb (which probably means cutting red and Burning Wish). That's a lot to lose just to gain Chalice @ 1 in less than 50% of games.

That's just goldfishing too. Against real players, like Fox said, it walks harder into the artifact hate everyone already has to run. I tried to Brainstorm what this deck might look like, but struggled. More fragile and higher variance.


//Lands: 26
10 Plains
4 Flagstones of Trokair
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Urza's Saga
3 Wasteland
1 Karakas

//Creatures: 12
4 White Plume Adventurer
4 Solitude
4 Timeless Dragon

//Planeswalkers: 4
4 Karn, the Great Creator

//Artifact: 7
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Zuran Orb
1 Currency Converter
1 Crucible of Worlds

//Spells: 11
4 March of Otherworldly Light
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
2 Cosmic Intervention
3 Cataclysm
1 Restore Balance

//Sideboard: 15
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Angel of the Ruins
1 Powder Keg
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Lion Sash
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Torpor Orb
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Archon of Emeria
2 Spirit of the Labyrinth


White Plume gets Plains. Even if it dies you're up on cards. Seems decent.
I increased numbers on Saga and Crucible because 4x Tomb makes the Saga beatdown plan a bit stronger.
Unsure about Cataclysm vs Wrath, without Lotus Field to abuse the asymmetry. But with the higher creature count and the land recursion effects, Cataclysm might still work. Worst case it pitches.
The SB needed some tweaks to have fewer 1s and more redundancy, because you can't ETutor for them. There are more hate pieces to bring in against combo, but many are creatures so they're playable against fair decks too.

But Fox's version gains significantly more card selection, tech, and variance reduction without Chalice

//Lands: 26
10 Plains
4 Flagstones of Trokair
3 Urza's Saga
3 Wasteland
1 Karakas

1 Castle Ardenvale
1 Plateau
1 Arid Mesa
1 Lotus Field
1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity


//Creatures: 8
4 Solitude
4 Timeless Dragon

//Planeswalkers: 3
3 Karn, the Great Creator

//Artifact: 6
1 Zuran Orb
2 Currency Converter

1 Lodestone Bauble
1 Expedition Map
1 Relic of Progenitus


//Spells: 15
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Burning Wish

3 March of Otherworldly Light
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
2 Cosmic Intervention
2 Cataclysm
1 Restore Balance

//Enchantments: 2
1 Land Tax
1 Humility

//Sideboard: 15
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Angel of the Ruins
1 Powder Keg
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Ethersworn Canonist

1 Scroll Rack
1 Cursed Scroll
1 Hex Parasite
1 Porphyry Nodes
1 Overmaster
1 Cataclysm
1 Ruination
1 Thought Distortion

I'm currently down to 1x Scroll Rack in SB only. A second Currency Converter main does more (and in multiples I like activating one to put the discard exiled under the second untapped Converter); also it drops the mana curve while still turning lands from Tax into spells.

On the SB, the only decent sorceries I can find which are either uncounterable or pitch to Solitude/March or have value are Decree of Justice (better with Standstill) and Thrilling Discovery...but the latter has issue with Day's and Echo being legal and saying "draw" on my turn (in mid to late game) vs a format overloaded with Leo/Narset/Labyrinth passives. A SB Sevinne's is fine except everyone I play against sides in yard hate, so it only works well in game 1 - like I don't know what it is but like even back before 3cmc Teferi on UW Standstill I had like 2x SCM and always the yard hate came in from opponents, like clockwork. This represents a profound problem in their SB mapping rather than everyone being that bad at legacy - expect this boarding pattern when selecting Wish targets.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fox

On the SB, the only decent sorceries I can find which are either uncounterable or pitch to Solitude/March or have value are Decree of Justice (better with Standstill) and Thrilling Discovery...but the latter has issue with Day's and Echo being legal and saying "draw" on my turn (in mid to late game) vs a format overloaded with Leo/Narset/Labyrinth passives. A SB Sevinne's is fine except everyone I play against sides in yard hate, so it only works well in game 1 - like I don't know what it is but like even back before 3cmc Teferi on UW Standstill I had like 2x SCM and always the yard hate came in from opponents, like clockwork. This represents a profound problem in their SB mapping rather than everyone being that bad at legacy - expect this boarding pattern when selecting Wish targets.

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Your local meta must know how much you like cards like Timeless Dragon, Sevinne's, and the Heliod tech. Either that or they assume you're playing a worse Sharkstill with 4x Shark and Replenish, accidentally boarding against your other GY tech, lol.

What about Gift of Estates then? Pitches to Solitude/March, thins Plains, and ramps you when you can't cast the big stuff.

Otherwise 1 Prismatic Ending may not be the worst? If you're Wishing, you have at least 2 colors. Lotus Field makes a 3rd.

Gift of the Estates isn't really going to generate velocity in a board stall. My next turns will all be better b/c I have less odds of drawing a brick, but it doesn't help in that moment. As such the opponent is going to let it resolve and they're still going to have permission for the next spell that matters. It's kinda like RUG Delver bringing in Loam vs a deck with majority basic lands; it doesn't really do anything except cost them time and risk falling behind. You always need something else to capitalize on effects like these, and that's a bad gamble to add to a game of chance.

Ending kinda tops out at 2, unless magical Christmas happens and there's a mix of Lotus/Plateau/Petals (Currency Converter). Just like with Gift of the Estates, I need more things I can't count on to go right.

While CJ would make more sense, it's not uncouterable, doesn't create CA, and doesn't represent a game-ending effect. The chances are whatever I was going to try and CJ would get wiped by spot removal or invalidated by Humility or sacrificed to Cataclysm or not be a castable card b/c I've nuked their mana into the ground. If they errata CJ to kill a PW emblem, suddenly we have something to talk about. As it is, I can animate a Kaldra and either Karakas or Plow it or chump and lock it out with Karn passive or straight up exile with a full-7 March.

Those effects kinda lead to "but why wouldn't I just make that a Lattice"...and the reason I don't run Lattice is b/c it only wins games I've already won. I don't need to risk all-ins to steal games, I just need to restart the engine, and if I do that, any progress that CJ might have stopped probably isn't going to remain relevant if I keep throwing Cataclysms at them till they fall apart.

Kinda the last card that in all of the format that I sort of have an issue with is Progenitus, but even there I can Humility or easily buy a ton of draw steps with Zuran/Cosmic +/- Solitude lifelink. About the only thing I might want is the cheaper Tariff (moreso if it could hit any permanent I hit with Coating - a card that probably survives a game stall). I just don't feel the need to super overkill Progenitus/Murktide/Reanimator & SnT dudes, since I'm overboarded with maindeck ways to stop them.

The jankier thing than Thrilling Discovery would be Leave // Chance. I guess I could super overkill Kaldra with Dust to Dust. It's just very hard to find a card worth answering as compared to restarting the engine. Wreak Havoc is close to what I'd need to see in a card.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fox

While CJ would make more sense, it's not uncouterable, doesn't create CA, and doesn't represent a game-ending effect.

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But you already have uncounterable and game-ending effects to Wish for? (Cataclysm, Ruination & Thought Distortion)

The point of that extra wish slot was to have something useful for when you don't have the mana or position to use big mana game-ending effects. When you have 4+ mana and a board stall, Cataclysm is better.

But there are times when you cannot cast Cataclysm or Wishing for Cataclysm is too slow (e.g. not enough lands or losing to 1 permanent that would survive). You still want to be able to convert that Burning Wish, instead of having it be a dead card in hand. I assume that's how aedemiel found Wish to be dead. In that scenario, it's nice to have 1 Wish target that's castable under low resources and does something relevant. That's where I valued having the SB Ending/Sevinne's in Landstill. Even if not game-ending, it beats having a dead Wish in hand while losing. You could get Overmaster, but spending 1RR over 2 turns just to cycle is bad (unless you have the mana & cards to follow it up with Cataclysm).

Council's Judgment is probably the best option. It's the most likely to do something relevant when you can't afford to play Draw-Go until 4+ lands (opponent has played a must-answer). The only downside is mana cost. If you don't have 3 lands, or you need to play around Daze, or you have 3-4 lands but can't afford to pass the turn, then CJ is too slow. In that case, a 2-mana effect would still do something. That was my rationale for something other than CJ.

Prismatic Ending for WR should be enough in that scenario. It's not game-ending. It won't bail you out against high CMC problems. But if you're at risk of losing when you're low on mana, the thing you need to remove is probably 0-2 cmc, and costing less than CJ is better tempo. Tariff would be better against big creatures (Murktide, Griselbrand) but fails against low CMC problems (LED, Wishclaw, 1-2 mana threat, 1-2 mana hate piece), so it depends what are the biggest threats of fast losses.

Gift of Estates was to ramp from 2 to 5, if you already have good effects in hand but lack the mana to use them fast enough. Then it not only thins to improve draws but also ramps you out of manascrew. Again, it was to address the low resource situation where Wishing for the big mana game-enders is too slow to save you.

Thrilling Discovery could also work as a 2-mana hail mary. You can hope to randomly draw into mana and answers. It works even if you don't have fewer lands. However it requires red mana (pass-the-turn because your red source tapped to cast Wish). It also leaves you with fewer cards and more dependence on random draws vs your position after casting Gift.

Leave // Chance could also dig you out of a bad position, but costs much more mana to do so. At that point you could afford the big spells instead.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FTW

There are a lot of good 1s to give up:
Swords to Plowshares - Must go up to 4x March 4x Solitude and still lose 1 mana 1-for-1 vs big stuff like Murktide

Enlightened Tutor toolbox

Expedition Map toolbox (no Lotus Field -> cut Cataclysm too?)

Urza's Saga toolbox (can't reliably run many 1s and 0s with Chalice, maybe 2 targets total)

Land Tax - Even though there's only 1 copy, ETutor makes 3 virtual copies when you need it. There's also 1 Scroll MD + 3 virtual Scroll SB (Karn). Chalice means 0 Land Tax and then 0 Scroll, so you are fully off Parfait and have no late game card advantage.

Losing 3 tutor toolboxes means much more draw variance (already a problem with Stompy). Going down to 0 Land Tax + 0 Scroll means even less card selection and no card advantage. Then more variance by adding Ancient Tomb (which probably means cutting red and Burning Wish). That's a lot to lose just to gain Chalice @ 1 in less than 50% of games.

That's just goldfishing too. Against real players, like Fox said, it walks harder into the artifact hate everyone already has to run. I tried to Brainstorm what this deck might look like, but struggled. More fragile and higher variance.


//Lands: 26
10 Plains
4 Flagstones of Trokair
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Urza's Saga
3 Wasteland
1 Karakas

//Creatures: 12
4 White Plume Adventurer
4 Solitude
4 Timeless Dragon

//Planeswalkers: 4
4 Karn, the Great Creator

//Artifact: 7
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Zuran Orb
1 Currency Converter
1 Crucible of Worlds

//Spells: 11
4 March of Otherworldly Light
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
2 Cosmic Intervention
3 Cataclysm
1 Restore Balance

//Sideboard: 15
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Angel of the Ruins
1 Powder Keg
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Lion Sash
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Torpor Orb
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Archon of Emeria
2 Spirit of the Labyrinth


White Plume gets Plains. Even if it dies you're up on cards. Seems decent.
I increased numbers on Saga and Crucible because 4x Tomb makes the Saga beatdown plan a bit stronger.
Unsure about Cataclysm vs Wrath, without Lotus Field to abuse the asymmetry. But with the higher creature count and the land recursion effects, Cataclysm might still work. Worst case it pitches.
The SB needed some tweaks to have fewer 1s and more redundancy, because you can't ETutor for them. There are more hate pieces to bring in against combo, but many are creatures so they're playable against fair decks too.

But Fox's version gains significantly more card selection, tech, and variance reduction without Chalice

//Lands: 26
10 Plains
4 Flagstones of Trokair
3 Urza's Saga
3 Wasteland
1 Karakas

1 Castle Ardenvale
1 Plateau
1 Arid Mesa
1 Lotus Field
1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity


//Creatures: 8
4 Solitude
4 Timeless Dragon

//Planeswalkers: 3
3 Karn, the Great Creator

//Artifact: 6
1 Zuran Orb
2 Currency Converter

1 Lodestone Bauble
1 Expedition Map
1 Relic of Progenitus


//Spells: 15
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Burning Wish

3 March of Otherworldly Light
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
2 Cosmic Intervention
2 Cataclysm
1 Restore Balance

//Enchantments: 2
1 Land Tax
1 Humility

//Sideboard: 15
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Angel of the Ruins
1 Powder Keg
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Ethersworn Canonist

1 Scroll Rack
1 Cursed Scroll
1 Hex Parasite
1 Porphyry Nodes
1 Overmaster
1 Cataclysm
1 Ruination
1 Thought Distortion

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I like the last list. I'm going without any creatures though, for now (old school parfait player). I'm also doing 3 Mox Diamonds and just added in 1 [[Karn's Sylex]] which Karn can of course re-fetch if he's not killed by it.

https://static.cardmarket.com/img/d9...40K/675710.jpg

Wouldn't thazt guy be kinda cute in a W or UW shell with scroll rack ?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FFreak

https://static.cardmarket.com/img/d9ab88d2bcae3842fcaf7df781d558f9/items/1/40K/675710.jpg

Wouldn't thazt guy be kinda cute in a W or UW shell with scroll rack ?

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Do you think that it's a good deal to spend :2: on scroll rack and another :1: on activating it to get a :2: + :1: = :3: discount on casting a spell?

I play baneslayer. Evasion is good. Rack with miracles is a trap.

Has someone tried doomskar to replace wraths? I'm interested to try it.