Hello everybody!
What has been developed the past months has entered the contest.
@Peter_Rotten: While reading the rules, thanks a lot for mentioning the orinigal thread of this deck :D
NB! All text beyond this point has been written in Mac Office 2004. I don't know if font types and font sizes are compitable with the Site Code. Revising may be needed.
Anyway, one piece of primer coming up:
Food Chain – The Phoenix of Legacy
Table of Contents:
1: Introduction/History
2: The decklist
3: Card Choices
4: Playing the deck
5: Matchup Analysis
6: Why this deck?
7: Important notes
8: Credits
Introduction:
As I earlier posted an outcast to the final list in the new & developmental decks forum, I was surprised how many people who were interested in the deck development. Some people were flaming it, other people picked it up. Credits will be in the last section. Anyway, the outcast I posted seemed good, but it was inferior to what it finally became. This decklist might not be complete, but it has shown some pretty good results. I started brewing a raw deck idea when I first saw Mulldrifter. It had to be meant for constructed. Faerie Stompy adopted it (well, some builds did), but I saw it as a combo potential. That said, the deck’s not Food Chain Elves, Food Chain Stompy, Food Chain Control or whatever. It’s COMBO! People have realized that various kills are possible, but I submit this one with Maga, Traitor To Mortals kill. It’s consistent, fast and easy to build around. Here’s what is my build right now:
The Decklist:
4 Food Chain
4 Force of Will
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Mulldrifter
4 Court Hussar
4 Raven Familiar
4 Imperial Recruiter
1 Fierce Empath
2 Nantuko Cultivator
3 Myojin of Seeing Winds
1 Maga, Traitor To Mortals
1 Storm Entity
4 Vine Dryad
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
Sideboard:
4 Trinisphere
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Meddling Mage
3
This is what I mean is the most consistent. Like TES, this version kills in two ways. Unfortunately, the deck cannot kill turn 1 or turn 2, earliest turn 3 which of course makes it inferior to TES in THAT way. However, its abiity of packing FoW, being immune to spell snare, counterbalance, gaddock teeg, glowrider, thorn of amethyst, trinisphere, chalice at 0 1 & 2, and the like. Because the deck is able of playing high cc spells, almost no hate in legacy regarding mana costs (and there are many of them) can harm the deck. The only real threats of this are as well as all other decks, Force of Will. This decks also uses it, which can lead into a counter war. It’s your choice whether to run Mesmeric Fiends or FoW. You can stack Fiend triggers so that the card will stay removed from the game. FoW is just nice to help food chain resolve, Mesmeric Fiend is better midcombo. The deck which is simply called ”Food Chain” is based on Food Chain only. Being a SCS deck (Singe Card Strategy) is a weakness on some points, but makes it pretty consistent once it has resolved Food Chain. In one of the 100 goldfishes i made with the deck, I experienced four fizzles after getting food chain into play. A f That said, it has no problems of going off. The diggers in the deck are a high number of 23 because we need to ramp up mana to play a lethal Maga, Traitor To Mortals or playing 19 spells so Storm Entity becomes a hasted 1-turn clock. The opponent may chump block, but even four goyfs cannot deal with it (unless your opponent are extremely lucky). This might be two risky kill conditions, but you have to mind that you actually have two, and lifegain cannot help your opponent as Maga often will cause a life loss of around 30, depending on when you find it. Counterspells might be a problem at turn 3 (which is the earliest you can go off with this build, in rare cases, turn 2), but since you have 4 FoW, a lot of bait, and 2 kills, you can often be pretty secure when going for the win. Therapies can’t be played on your turn by your opponent, along with most discard, so you should be safe here.
Card Choices:
Food Chain: Center card of the deck. The meaning of the deck is abusing its ability of adding mana and converting creature spells into cantrips and acceleration to finish the chain with a whooping creature.
Trinisphere: A pretty random all around hoser, which can be very useful against many decks, and stompy decks often get surprised to se their own chalices have no effect at all.
Force of Will: Packing a lot of blue cards makes an auto include of thi sone. It’s still the best card in Legacy. Period.
Enlightened Tutor: Food Chain 5-8. Postbard, it can also net you a 3sphere or a CoTV.
Mulldrifter: The best drawer as it adds cards and mana. Not much to say, this dude’s fantastic.
Court Hussar: Digger. Serves as a ”free” Ponder. If Food Chain not’s in play, it can still be played to hold the line a turn which can be important to do against stiflenought. Prevention of three damage makes their clock a turn slower.
Raven Familiar: Although it cannot slow stiflenought, it blocks serra avengers after made its digging. Ponder 5-8.
Imperial Recruiter: Although it has been discussed because of its price tag, it has shown its importance in the deck. It finds about anything.
Fierce Empath: Finds only Myojin in the current version, it’s a subject for discussion. If you are playing Mournwhelk, this becomes much better.
Nantuko Cultivator: The most important draw spell midcombo. Serves as a Tolarian Winds and adds a FAT body behind. It’s insane when you’re stuck with 10 lands in hand. This has won me many games when I was on the brink of fizzling.
Myojin of Seeing Winds: The star of the deck draws a hell lot of cards and therefore generating a lot of cardadvantage. It’s not hard to reach that mana in the deck.
Maga, Traitor To Mortals: The human fireball with damage that cannot be prevented by i.e. Angel’s Grace. This could be switched for some mana fixing and Tendrils of Agony.
Storm Entity: Alternative killer. There’s nothing like a man grapeshot that also serves as a brutal fast clock.
Vine Dryad: A bit shaky because we are only running 11 green cards, but it serves as an extra possibility of going off a turn earlier than the opponent may expect.
5c mana base: With so many different colors in the deck ( 5 in fact), it’s important to play ALL of them. Not many other decks in legacy runs 5 colors, and that also serves as a rather cheap mana base instead of just purchasing fetches. Fetches might be better with Skyshroud Cutter instead of Vine Dryad, but Oros, the Avenger and I have already teste dit, and Dryad is just plain better than just giving te opponent 5 life. You will gain card advantage anyway later on so pitching a card.
Playing the deck:
Imagine Solitaire (the real solitaire). That’s how Food Chain should be played. It takes a couple of minutes to go off, and your opponent might think that youare just playing into nowhere. My opponent didn’t had time to play with me when I tested the deck. However, this is how it should be done:
1. Find Food Chain. You have 4 off them, 4 tutors, 12 diggers (mulldrifter, court hussar, raven familiar)
2. Protect Food Chain in one turn. This is required to do in my build. The Vine Dryad accel can be done, but it is rare when going off to have food chain, vine dryad AND another Vine Dryad or Food Chain in hand.
3. Play a creature, eat it, play another creature, eat it, etc.
4. Find Maga, Traitor To Mortals, a Force of Will, and A Storm Entity to ensure your win.
The thing about protecting food chain might be an issue because thresh boards Krosan Grip, and a lot of other decks uses artifact/enchantment removal in SB. An option could be the use of 4 Vine Dryad. You could then combo off the same turn as you played Food Chain, but that lowers consistensy midcombo by a great number. If you are playing a combo deck that can earliest go off at turn 3, you HAVE to kill that turn. If you don’t it’s GG most of the time. Luckily, this deck rapes every kind of aggro decks most of the time. Aggro without discard or artifact/enchantment removal, counters and simply disruption will not stand a chance. Plain aggro like goyf sligh is a joke. Dragon Stompy can’t hurt the deck either unless they set the chalice to 3. And they rarely do. 6 mana is hard for them to achieve before I manage to get the first creature into play.
Going off: Rather irritating, but a required way is needed to go off in the proper way. When food chain has resolved and it is your turn, you can go off in a lot of ways. The best is to start with the star of the deck, Mulldrifter. Pay 2U to evoke him, the trigger is put onto the stack. In response, remove him for UUUUUU as there are far more blue creatures in the deck than other colors. Now, play a court hussar or raven familiar from among the cards in your hand or the cards you’ve just drawn. Play a hussar, stack the trigger, the trigger from the ”you’ve not paid W so sac thi sone” trigger will also stack. The order is irrelevant. Eat him in response. Add RRRR to your mana pool if you have imperial recruiter in hand. Else, add whatever’s needed to play the next one. Do this in chains so you at last have enough mana to not worry about the color. When you’ve saved up 25 mana (if you have storm entity in hand, else 23), tutor with recruiter for Maga. If you have FoW and FoW-food in hand, you are safe. Play maga, X=20 and kill the opponent. Many opponents will damage themselves through their manabase, so X can be even lower the later you go off. The sad things about these incredibly awesome, yet slow chains, is that they are easily disruptable. Therefore, it is always good to have Maga in hand all the time. If you can, tutor for it ASAP. Maybe, it isn’t lethal yet, but i twill become 12/12 or something like that to stomp your opponents with. It’s hard to deal with. Therefore, Storm Entity is included. This can be switched with Iname as One, because Iname can accelerate mana into ridicolous amounts, but it is very rare that so much mana are needed. Iname brings in Moyjin, and when you eat the both, you get a boost of 24 mana, just enough for a lethal maga. The sad thing about is, if you do NOT have maga in hand at that time, the danger of digging into it and thus not finding it is dying. If you fizzle (which happens VERY rarely when you begin to ”chain”), you die. This deck cannot recover at all when it has fizzled at the first attempt. However, fizzles will mostly end your chain with an incredibly large Storm Entity, and that is the reason I’m playing it. Opponent’s counterspells also count as storm counters, you know. So why play this deck at all? It’s pretty slow compared to other combo decks, it can easily be disrupted by counters – and that’s the point. When you’re going off, no other thing than counterspells can disrupt you. And counterbalance doesn’t work at this deck. Take a look at the curve. Pretty high, eh? Counterbalance in thresh which has the top curve at 2 doesn’t stand a chance. Needles doesn’t do a thing because the food chain’s ability is a mana ability, CotV at 0,1 or 2 can’t hurt the deck, and 3sphere is nimbly dodged. STP can just be responded to, and a killing krosan grip doesn’t affect mana abilities, so food chain can make a last response to get the final key card. Decks with pyrostatic pillar will not affect you. If the opponent stops food chain too late, it’s over. This is the beauty of the deck. Massive acceleration, wierd curve and a MANA ability as the centerpiece of the deck makes this deck shine. If you play Food Chain Elves, you got yourself a problem at getting a large enough swarm into play. This is raw combo, not aggro-combo which seems to fail in legacy. How many aggro-combo decks exist? Not a single one as far as I know. Decicated aggro like Food Chain Goblins can’t exist in Legacy without evil tutors. And those tutors in creature form doesn’t really exist. This is why the deck plays that many tutors/diggers/drawers, just to fire a human fireball against the opponent’s head. WTF they will think the most of the time when a XBBB wierdo from Kamigawa block hits their face followed up by a futureshifted creature stormer. Can there be any other kills? Sure, some creatures that produce ”real” mana can be used. This takes either a coal stoker and a grapeshot, or composite golem, ETW. This is just not good enough. Keep in mind that every creature in the deck provides card quality/advantage. None of the ”real” mana producers does this. Composite Golem into priest of gix, then tendrils of agony would be too wierd and clumsy. And too inconsitent. While the maga kill seems odd, it’s the best you can offer unless a storm spell in creature form except than Storm Entity exist. This deck is far from developed as the kill condition can be found in future sets. I wait and wait for a proper kill. But until then, the kill’s doable.
Matchups:
Goblins: Even, depending on splash. G s
Sadly, thoughtseize has been printed, which allows goblins to knock your only creature card off your hand. The lucky thing about this, Gobs can’t draw nongoblin cards, so they got to mull all the way to grip, naturalize and/or thoughtseize. This is a major problem for them. However, you got absolutely no answers to a lackey except for a FoW. But you’ll kill them before they kill you, and after game 1, chalice or 3sphere halt them a LOT. Because you can protect yourself against them, this one is even.
Thresh with CounterTop: Slightly unfavorable – postboard, around even
CounterTop engine does nothing to your combo, and Daze does never get an opportunity to get played (you’ll float a LOT of mana between every spell) In any way, thresh is hard with brainstorm into FoW to blast your Maga away.
Landstill – even, depending alot on build. Enchantment-removal builds make the matchup slightly unfavorable.
If the build got a lot of enchantment removal, you’re screwed, and GG if crucible/wasteland becomes online. If they don’t have FoW, it’s over then.
Belcher – Even! Postboard, favorable
I’d never believe I was able to beat combo that was a lot faster than me, but since this is a goldfishing war, and you got FoW, 3sphere AND CotV, there’s nothing but a turn 1 belcher for 53 damage that can kill you. You’ll often combo out before ETW steamrolls you. On the other hand, there is a great chance that they manage to do.
Dragon stompy (or chalice aggro) – Even, postboard, no change.
this is just a midrange deck for you, which you manage to beat easily. Magus of the Moon is GG, though if you haven’t resolved Food Chain yet. On the other hand, sphere and CotV is card disadvantage batman against your opponent’s faces. You win if you manage to combo out before magus hits the board. Because the deck’s engine card is green, you can’t flash it into play, and the deck contains NO basic lands, you are dead to say the least. Slogger, the swords and Jitte does nothing to you.
Eva Green – Unfavorable, postboard extremely unfavorable.
This is just a slaughter. Discard and a VERY fast clock makes that deck unbeatable. I beat it one game out of twenty. Yes, the deck has bad matchups, and as it seems right now, decks with discard and artifact-enchantment removal postboard are a pain in your ass.
Why bother?
An important note is that this deck, like stompy and aluren dodges chalice, Cbalance, 3sphere and other CMC-hate cards. And becuase legacy is a fast format, and noone could ever dream of participating in a contest with a deck with a curve like this deck, nobody’s expecting the deck, boarding the wrong cards in/out, and playing their hate in a strange way. The only way Cbalance could hurt you putting top on lib in response to an E-tutor. This is the only card in the deck with -3 cc.
To sum up, this is chalice-combo. In other words, combo that doesn’t get hurt by mana-hate thrown at it. All hate is dodged except for Magus of the moon, which is GG in many other decks, whatsoever.
This has a hell lot of potential, and it’s able to build tons of builds from Food Chain, aggro, control and combo. Food Chain has the potential to become an archetype in Legacy, and this competition entry is the kick that will (maybe) start some serious development to competitive level, although I mean that this deck with some little luck can top8 in a +33 man tournament. I don’t know if it can become a DTW, though. Time will show.
Important notes:
This is NOT storm combo. Well, Storm Entity is sort of, but it doesn’t really count.
Under any circumstances, any creatures that don’t provide CA or serves as accel or kill condition. A card like Akroma or tombstalker will not do in this deck. The kill needs to be done in the same turn it’s threwn into play.
This is a creature combo with no tournament staples at all (FoW doesn’t serve as a combo enabler). This is true innovation, gentlemen!
You can argue as much as you want, this is NOT Aluren with a worse engine. Aluren is a CONTROL-COMBO deck which manages to go off late game. This is NOT the purpose of this deck. Compare this deck to any raw combo deck around. Spring Tide is as fast as this deck. Solidarity is too, but the fact that it can go off at instant speed makes solidarity shine. The complete dodge of mana-curve hate, it’s ability to run FoW, it’s amazing consistency and it’s ability to kill with ANY creature ever printed, with no restrictions of mana cost and it’s relatively cheap cost makes THIS shine, to give some examples.
Credits:
When I first submitted this deck, it was awful, but the concept interested a hell lot of people. But keep in mind that everyone that posted constructive critique in the original thread (fuck, how to link to that thread, would a mod please do this were I’ve written this dumb reminder text?) Anyway, it’s called [Deck] Food Chain – Evoke Abuse. These two people has helped a lot, and even though I’ve never talked to them IRL, or at any other messaging site than here, I’ve felt that I finally talked to somebody who actually liked the deck concept. On a lot other sites, the deck was flamed as hell – anyway, I managed to win a smaller deck contest with a suboptimal build of Food Chain on a Danish site. I’m making a 2nd attempt at another competion, the very CaNG! These two people deserves as much credit as myself (if I really deserve anything):
Oros, the Avenger – plays the exact same build, we developed it togehter
Maverick76f – said to me that the deck should be submitted. That really encouraged me. Also, he got some VERY interesting builds that I should take a closer look at.
Two awesome people, these guys should be looked at as co-developers. About the decklist, Oros knows as much as me about it.
Ask about anything if I have not stated it clearly enough in the primer.
-Willoe
