Infinite Cunning
Overview
01. Disclaimer
02. Intro
03. History
04. The Deck
05. Sample decklist
06. How to start off the combo?
07. How to win once you’ve got your combo off?
08. New tricks
09. Alternate kills
10. Matchups, sideboarding and strategy
11. Stuff to consider
12. Thread log
01. Disclaimer
This primer is work in progress. I’ve written it hastily (exams) to accommodate the problem of discussing two quite different decks in the original Omniscience thread. My linguistic skills aren’t great either, but when my exams are over with, I’ll do my best to fix typos and of course add more content. In the meantime, you are welcome to come up with suggestions. I’ll do my best to respond to them and work them into this primer.
02. Intro
So yet another Show and Tell based combo deck? Just what I needed… If this was your initial thought, this probably isn’t the thread for you to be reading. However, if you have been playing Show and Tell for some time and are interested in hearing about how some new and old tech come together to form a new deck, you are in the right place. So what is this deck all about? With the recent printing of Omniscience and Enter the Infinite, this strategy has gotten some new toys, which makes it easier to fight through some of the meta-cards pointed towards Show and Tell. Tired of Karakas, Oblivion Ring, Angel of Despair, Pithing Needle, Humility, Ensnaring Bridge, and so forth? This deck dodges most of them and has clever answers to all of them.
Eager to hear what this deck is all about? Then skip to the card selection part. Otherwise, I’ll start out by giving a short introduction outlining how various card printings have helped shape the development of Show and Tell based decks.
03. History
-- This section will tell the story of how Show and Tell based decks has evolved something in the line of this: Habili Dream Halls (prior to the printing of Emrakul) >Sneak and Show (prior to the printing of Griselbrand) > Hive Mind (Mental Misstep in/out)> Hesslip/Lax Dream Halls > Sneak and Show > Omni Tell > Cunning Halls.
04. The deck
Card selection
I’ll start out at the very core of the deck. Since legacy isn’t a format of efficient tutors, we’ll have to go for the second best thing. This deck runs the following cantrips and usually four of each:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Besides finding the combo pieces, and protection when needed, they also serves to cut down on the number of lands. This is last part is especially important in decks with Dream Halls, since they require a great portion of blue cards in hand, when comboing off.
Mana base
Talking of lands leads me to the mana base. I’ve had some discussion with Lelay (the one piloting the deck to a 9-0 day one finish at GP Strasbourg) about to construct a proper mana base for this deck. In order for you to choose for you self, I’ll present both views:
I’ve based my original list on Ari Lax’ build. His list is based on constructing storm mana bases: You want as few actual lands as possible and plenty of fetches, so that you’ll always have a shuffle effect available. Ari runs nine fetches which is reasonable, since both storm and this deck can win fast enough to make life total less of a concern. To be able to cast all spells in the deck solely off islands, Ari ran five. This leads me to Lejay’s list: He is running ten islands and six fetches. His reasoning has been that too many fetches leads to losses in tight games and that six should be enough if you play your Brainstorms conservatively. In the sample deck lists you’ll find that Nicolas Goldberg ran seven Islands and eight fethes. This seems to be a balanced approach in between mine and Lejay’s. As of writing this primer, I’ve done some minor testing using Goldberg’s list and it seems good. As I mentioned, you just have to play your Brainstorm/fetch mechanic more conservatively. Another thing both Lejay and Goldberg has done, is shaving the number of Stompy lands:
Since this deck has a high average converted mana cost compared to its actual number of lands, we need some boost. I’ll start out quoting Ari Lax:
“The second is a bit more in-depth but it comes down to the fact that five is significantly less than six. Dream Halls is a much easier card to just hardcast than Hive Mind is. You can easily curve out with three basics into an Ancient Tomb or City of Traitors and win the game on turn 4 without ever exposing yourself to Wasteland. Hive Mind needs five lands and a Sol land to naturally cast the namesake spell forcing it to play extra enablers like Grim Monolith to support what becomes a three-card combo. By cutting this dependency you gain extra slots to use on cantrips or protection.”
This lead to three points of discussion: The actual number of lands, how man stompy lands and which ones to use. Most decks, including mine, is running 19. This means, that if we are running five stompy lands, we are down to 14 virtual islands (counting fetches for the purpose of mulliganing). This makes the deck slighty more prone to mulliganing but increases the chances of hitting a stompy land by turn three or four. The last thing in this regard is what stompy lands to use. I’ve almost seen all possible combinations of splits (Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors) like 3/2, 4/1, 3/1, 2/2, and 0/4. We’ve already talked about the number, so the last point is similar to the discussion of fethlands: How much does the extra damage from Ancient Tomb hurts compared to being able to deploy the stompy lands early on? I’ll leave this last point up in the air until further testing has been conducted.
Protection
One of the perks of being a blue Show and Tell based combo deck is that you get to run Force of Will. This deck is no exception in that regard. Some lists run three main deck and one to tutor for in the sideboard. I’m personally running four (and Misdirection in the sideboard) to improve my game one matchups against decks like storm, belcher, and dredge.
The protection suite is actually what makes this particular build special and separates it from the other Omniscience decks: Since we can win on the spot (consistently), we get to run Pact of Negation. Usually people play some mix of Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm in this slot, so what does this mean? Here’s a little comparison:
Spell Pierce/Flusterstorm:
- Great against discard
- Greatly improves combo mirror (especially storm)
- Acceptable against Dredge (countering Study/Looting/Breakthrough/Therapy)
Pact of Negation:
- Dead against a huge part of the field, especially game one (usually gets boarded out)
- Really good against RUG Delver and other blue tempo based strategies, not requiring an extra blue card
- Greater at protecting a hard cast Dream Halls, which is usually only problematic against Delver based decks
So, that might sound like the latter should have the upper hand. Well, since I consider this deck to be the best in the format, and in my testing boasts really great matchup percentages against the entire field except tempo decks (and Reanimator which is straight up horrible), this is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Number of “bombs”
Most lists are maxing out on both Dream Halls and Omniscience. I like this approach, since it enables you to naturally draw one of them so that you can use your cantrips to fix mana and find appropriate answers in time. Lastly, running all eight bombs also makes the deck into more of a two card combo.
The “odd” choices
The deck also plays a single Intuition and some number of cards with converted mana cost two like Impulse or Trickbind. What those do will be explained later, so I’ll leave you with a cliff hanger.
Mono blue or splash?
This is legacy right; you can run any mana base you want? Yes and no. Keeping the deck mono blue helps out in a few ways: The obvious one of course is that you don’t have to worry about Wasteland in the same way. Also not having to worry about the sequence in which different fetchlands are used (ie. saving Scalding Tarn to fetch a basic mountain in Sneak and Show) can save some mental fatigue during long tournaments. Lastly, splashing for cards like Thoughtseize and Burning Wish hampers your ability to combo off with Dream Halls. This is also a point to keep in mind, when constructing the sideboard. Boarding in too many non-blue cards devalues Dream Halls.
05. Sample decklist
Nicolas Goldberg, 1st @ Bazaar of MoxenVII
2 Scalding Tarn
7 Island
2 City of Traitors
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
4 Show and Tell
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
3 Force of Will
4 Enter the Infinite
4 Brainstorm
4 Cunning Wish
3 Pact of Negation
1 Impulse
1 Flusterstorm
1 Intuition
4 Omniscience
4 Dream Halls
Sideboard
1 Pact of Negation
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Intuition
1 Trickbind
1 Wipe Away
1 Research // Development
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Firemind's Foresight
1 Echoing Truth
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Force of Will
Similar lists
Undefeated Day 1 @ GP Strasbourg (Jean-Mary Accart) - http://mtgpulse.com/event/12916#181110 (Cunning Wish based)
2nd GP Trial Aarhus (Jon Petersen ~ me) - http://mtgpulse.com/event/12689#177961 (Emrakul based)
5th SCG Open Cincinatti (Rob Vaca) - http://mtgpulse.com/event/12220#171264 (Emrakul based)
06. How to start off the combo?
- Credit for this part goes to emidln.
3UU - Dream Halls + Cunning Wish + 2 blue cards
3UU - Dream Halls + Enter the Infinite + 1 blue card
3UU - Dream Halls + Intuition + 2 blue cards
2U - Show and Tell and any of the above
2U - Show and Tell + Omniscience + Cunning Wish
2U - Show and Tell + Omniscience + Enter the Infinite
2U - Show and Tell + Omniscience + Intuition
2U - Show and Tell + Omniscience + cantrips (not 100%, but very high)
This means you're playing either a 2 card or 3 card combo, depending on which enabler you happen to draw and how much mana you can spend on it. You might have noticed that Cunning Wish == Intuition == Enter the Infinite and Dream Halls == Omniscience. This is very much on purpose, as redundancy combined with cantrips is a reliable way to beat hand disruption while guaranteeing that you can kill aggro players in time.
You might have noticed that I'm assuming Cunning Wish is just win the game on the spot, 100%. Why do I do that? The answer is Firemind's Foresight. Look it up if you have to. It's an instant that finds you 3 more instants, at 3cmc, 2cmc, and 1cmc and puts them into your hand. Practically, this means that Dream Halls + Wish + 2 cards plays out like this:
cast Wish pitching the first card, finding Firemind's Foresight (FF)
cast FF pitching the second card, finding Intuition, Trickbind/Impulse, Brainstorm
cast Intuition pitching Trickbind/Impulse, finding 3x Enter the Infinite, getting 1 EtE
cast EtI pitching Brainstorm drawing your deck.
07. How to win once you’ve got your combo off?
Okay, so far you’ve demonstrated, that it is quite capable of drawing the entire library, but how does it actually win? There are quite some options: One could run a couple of Emrakuls. Once Omniscience is on the table you can play out the first one, take the extra turn, attack, play out the second one (time walk trigger), shuffle ‘em both back into the library, redraw them with another Enter the Infinite, play one (second time walk trigger). Take another turn and so on and so forth. Rinse and repeat till you’re out of opponents.
That sounded quite nice, so what’s wrong with that way of winning? For once, it takes up two slots and, secondly drawing Emrakul if often lackluster since it only combos with Omniscience (Show and Tell into Emrakul is not so cool these days; especially not within the time frame that this deck is able to doing to so), and thirdly people might play main deck cards that prevent you from attacking.
So what options do you propose then? The most compact suggested so far is using Release the Ants. Enter the Infinite makes you put one card back after drawing your entire library. Say you put down a second copy of Enter the Infinite and have Omniscience on the board, you can fetch it out using Cunning Wish. Since you have infinite mana and will win the clash, you are now able to dealing all the damage you want. The problem with this kill arises from the fact, that some people play Emrakul. A way around this problem is by playing a single Emrakul ourselves and just attack, but that can prove a bit problematic, since we are running Pact of Negation (and passing the turn to strike twice isn’t cool).
Okay, so is there a slightly less compact kill that foregoes all of the above problems? Glad you asked. If we relegate two sideboard slots to Laboratory Maniac and Research // Development all of the mentioned problem can be avoided. The kill is actually really simple; once you’ve resolved Enter the Infinite you start out fetching up Research using Cunning Wish. Repeat this process by using Research to shuffle Laboratory Maniac into your library, which now consists of two cards. Play out two Preordain or Ponder to draw the those two cards. With an empty library, play Laboratory Maniac and a third Preordain/Ponder. If your opponent does nothing you win. If they try to cast Lightning Bolt use your free Force of Will. If they try to cast Abrupt Decay, respond by playing a Brainstorm. Permanent based cards like Umezawa’s Jitte can be Trickbinded or bounced. This win condition also has the advantage of being able to played solely of off Dream Halls since it is all blue (in case you should lose your Omnisciences).
Video example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW2glyEuyDA (Bazaar of Moxen VII Finals).
08. New tricks
In my intro I mentioned a host of anti-Show and Tell cards and that this deck is capable of beating all of them. For the sake of simplicity I’ll group them together and go through how to beat them:
Karakas, Ensnaring Bridge, Pithing Needle, Phyrexian Revoker
No answer is needed. None of the cards touch this deck expect for opponents naming fetchlands with Pithing Needle.
Oblivion Ring, Angel of Despair, Vendilion Clique, Venser, Shaper Savant
Main deck: Cunning Wish in response to their trigger getting Firemind's Foresight. FF for a Cunning Wish, Impulse and Brainstorm. Cast the second Cunning Wish for Trickbind. Trickbind the trigger and use Impulse and Brainstorm to hopefully dig up a new win con.
Post board: Board in Trickbind. Cunning Wish in response to their trigger getting Firemind’s Foresight. Still in response, get Intuition, Trickbind, and Brainstorm = win.
Humility, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Gaddock Teeg
Cunning Wish for Wipe Away/Echoing Truth/Slaughter Pact.
Counterbalance
To combat Counterbalance, I board in Lab Man and Trickbind. When EtI resolves, I play Cunning Wish. I they don't flip a three cost, I wipe away the CB. If they do, I just play out Lab Man and Trickbind the trigger. I they try to counter my draw spells by flipping top, I just respond by playing Brainstorm (or C. Wish --> Wipe Away).
09. Alternate kills
~ Twincast/False Cure/Beacon of Immortality
~ Eladamri's Call/Emrakul
10. Matchups, sideboarding and strategy
-- Before writing this, I’ll just give up one piece of advise: Board lightly in most non-combo matchups.
11. Stuff to consider
Number of two cmc cards in the main deck
One thing I’d like to point out is that Nicolas is only running one main deck two-cmc card. In my testing this proved to be a bit problematic, since drawing it really hampers your Cunning Wish combo in conjunction with Dream Halls. My solution so far, has been to swap one Preordain for a second Impulse.
Leyline of Sanctity
To quote myself from a previous post: "I don't find leylines necessary. Back in the day, when you only played four Dream Halls and you could pitch extra leylines to Conflux, they where arguably okay, but now that we have so much redundancy, I really find them to be lackluster. We have eight halls/omnis and paired with omni upwards of 19 "go of spells" (4x EtI, 4x Wish, 4x Ponder, 4x Brainstorm, 2x Impulse, 1x Intuition). I've won far more games with omni+ponder, than I've lost. My point is, that even if you get your leyline down, you've still used a card. If they are playing BUG, they still have counterspells you have to fight through and they can brainstorm their discard away. Against non-blue discard, you are still mosty trading one for one, except they are losing tempo and you are not. I know, I know, double hymn hurts and sometimes they go turn one discard, turn two creature, turn three double discard. However, the latter is definitely the exception and with ~13 cantrips, you can usually dig your way out of trouble (and hide cards on top of your deck). Say you mulligan to six in order to hit a leyline, you've pratically double mulliganed, increased your likelihood of bad top decks and decreased the amount of blue cards to pitch to Dream Halls."
12. Thread log
2013-05-15: Posted the initial thread.
2013-05-16: Rearranged the thread, added a discussion on how to construct the deck, and added thread log as well as an overview.
Last edited by NesretepNoj; 06-06-2013 at 03:01 AM.
I already wrote a primer for the deck on storm boards. Like I said I'll perfect it and then post it on the source.
CLICK HERE FOR THE RULES OF A VERY FUN MULTIPLAYER CASUAL FORMAT
You very likely can build it without spending any money, just out of what you already have.
An example with my (very large) list in a visual form
I know. It's just that people kept repeating the same questions in the original Omniscience thread; questions which I've now mostly covered and actually didn't belong in a thread covering the Burning Wish + Creatures version. When you have finished your primer, we can just replace this one (or merge them, if you can use anything I've written).Originally Posted by Lejay
So, by any means, keep on writing
Good Job! Although now this means we aren't under the radar anymore lol
The BOM7 deck design is absolutely awesome!
I especially like the manabase with Islands +lands. Omni-Tell is practically a goldfish for the opponent until the combo turn. With the "more traditional" Ur builds and Urb builds, Wastelands could effectively give extra turns to the opponent AND screw our mana. (e.g. T2 Fetch for Volcanic Island to B.Wish->SnT, opponent wastes the Volcanic, no T3 combo = d'oh!) This made mulligan decisions sometimes very difficult if the hand was otherwise good but a single Wasteland could destroy it. Cantripping/digging for lands when we should be cantripping/digging for key cards is not very beneficial, either.
In regards to the second 2cc instant slot: how about Boomerang? It can also target a land, so it's not as dead as most other MD bounce slots.
That banner.
Where did you get that? I know it's enter the infinite but that black and white. It's gonna be my new playmat.
I am convinced that WotC is "dumbing" the game because of all the stupid posts they come across on MTG-related forums
If you don't like Leyline, what do you suggest in its place?
I understand the argument that Leyline makes you keep bad hands, mulligan good hands, and is a dead draw. Personally, I've been running without it. I'm curious on your thoughts.
"Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference."
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