So, Braids, Cabal Minion is hardly a playable card anymore, but she is still one of my old favorites and i've decided to bring her back!
Decklist//60
Lands//21
4 bayou
1 overgrown tomb
2 underground sea
1 tropical island
4 verdant catacombs
2 polluted delta
1 forest
1 swamp
4 wasteland
1 ghost quarter
Creatures//19
4 birds of paradise
4 gilded goose
4 braids cabal minion
4 baleful strix
3 ramunap excavator
Instants//12
4 fatal push
4 abrupt decay
4 assassin's trophy
Planeswalkers//4
3 Oko, thief of crowns
1 liliana, the last hope
Sorceries//4
4 sinkhole
Sideboard//15
2 collector ouphe
2 plague engineer
3 trinisphere
4 duress
4 leyline of the void
So, the concept is stax-based. You try to assemble a wasteland lock with ramunap excavator, or try to establish a stax lock with braids cabal minion + oko/gilded goose food tokens. You're win conditions are your planeswalkers, or getting your opponent to zero permanents.
The deck is very good vs chalice decks, but is pretty soft to Uro and the like, so the deck may not be very well positioned. Could use some more minds to help refine the concept. None of the numbers are in any way final, it's still up in the air. It would just be nice to be able to play stax in the format once more.
Any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.
You could probably gain a lot of power by adding 3-4 Green Sun's Zenith. That lets you cut down on copies of Gilded Goose (5 mana dorks is plenty) and maybe cut a Ramunap too, without losing consistency.
GSZ also allows easy access to toolbox answers like Collector Ouphe, Scavenging Ooze, Reclamation Sage and maybe a beater like Questing Beast.
8x Trophy 4x Push seems like overkill for spot removal. You could probably free up some space there too (maybe 8 copies total between the 3 instants) and then have room for other types of interaction like Thoughtseize, to diversify how you can interact with the opponent in game 1.
The manabase might be stronger with more fetches and fewer BG duals, which would allow the same access to B and G mana but more access to U mana for Oko and Strix.
Deck will flood out on mana dudes and have nothing to cast, and there‘s really no way to stop that as long as those cards are there. The 12 kill spells all require a compliant opponent playing targets, but at least you have Trophy and Sinkhole which work together vs most decks regardless of strategy.
If you‘re trying to be competitive this is a stopping point where we say: cut the mana dudes and Braids. Add Dark Rit, Oppo Agent, and some discard. It‘s maybe not great, but you have this whole Sinkhole/Trophy super-LD destruction theme going.
If you just want to play Braids, consider Dunes of the Dead, Karn (wish Smokestack, among others), and something that kills PWs (meaning Bloodchief‘s Thirst over every single copy of Push). Get up to 3x Plague Engi in the board. Your deck can‘t really build GY, but you should still have 1-2x Cling to Dust.
Once you're playing Braids and Karn, it's worth looking at an Ancient Tomb deck and using Crucible over Ramunap (dies to less, doesn't require green).
Example:
//Creatures: 10
4 Opposition Agent
3 Ophiomancer
3 Braids, Cabal Minion
//Planeswalkers: 4
4 Karn, the Great Creator
//Artifacts: 13
4 Chrome Mox
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere
2 Crucible of Worlds
//Spells: 10
4 Dark Ritual
4 Pelakka Predation
2 Eliminate
//Enchantments: 4
4 Leyline of the Void
//Lands: 19
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
3 Wasteland
9 Snow-Covered Swamp
//Sideboard: 15
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Torpor Orb
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Smokestack
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Trinisphere
1 Chains of Mephistopheles
3 Plague Engineer
2 Soul Shatter
This accelerates into Braids even faster than those mana dorks (Dark Rit, Tomb, Mox) and has the same land recursion and Wastelock with Crucible instead of Ramunap. But by going into Black Stax instead of BUG, you can back it up with explosive mana denial (3sphere, Opposition Agent, Chalice) so that they feel more pressure from Braids sacrifices. Braids becomes more crippling when your deck makes them already constrained on resources. Black Stax is strong in this meta so why not just play Braids in that?
There's also Karn to tutor for Smokestack (7 copies of Stax between Karn and Braids). Karn can get other pieces like Crucible, or just win the game with Lattice or Helm.
Ophiomancer can play a defensive role by making chump-blocking ground Strixes and also combos with Braids/Stack. There might be a better card to fit that role, maybe a planeswalker. Ophiomancer was just the first one I thought of.
T2 Dark Ritual into Braids is amazing. T3 or T4 Braids is worthless. You either run Braids with Ritual or you play a different deck.
I mean the Staxx version I posted has multiple ways to produce T2 Braids, and can theoretically even play T1 Crucible/Ophiomancer before that for the total lock (Tomb/City + Mox + Swamp, or with Rituals). It can also play T2 Karn fetching Smokestack into Crucible (2x Tomb/City, on top of the ways that make T2 Braids), or just fetching "Win the Game".
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