Bumbleberry Pie

[FTW]

It’s hard to cut one of the colours to a splash. Serra’s and prismatic are white, ponder and our engines are blue, and the best targets are sarcomancy and trial. The most reasonable manabase would be WBx but cutting ponder is probably not defensible.

That was how I arrived at the WBu version above.

White and black are both core to the deck. Blue is only needed for the 3 cmc engines. So blue could be made into a splash if you're willing to let go of Xerox (which forces you to strain blue count to support FoW and fetch differently to support cantrips). Cutting the blue stuff loses consistency and FoW protection, but you gain smoother mana and redundancy (4-ofs in 60 card build). That means seeing Sanctum and Estrid more often to really profit off the deck's unique advantages. Multiple Paladin Class and discard are then necessary to protect you from disruption, without Forces in the deck.

It's not quite a bad BW aggro deck. It looks like that against combo, but against fair creatures you still have the midrange plan of T2 value enchantment -> T3 Estrid/Aminatou -> snowball out of control. Trial of Ambition could replace some other slots.

I don't know if it's better than what you already have, but it is an option.

Edit: What about SB Doomwake Giant? It's slow but answers token spam. Might be worse than just playing Detention Sphere.

[Reeplcheep]

Ok here is a draft for a WBu build cutting ponder for dragon and cling. Not quite as good cards but they play better into the Serra’s sanctum theme. I am still supporting fow and brainstorm though as they require turn 1 U less. This affords us a few more basics.

Teferi to dsphere as per above.


3 Legion’s Landing
4 Sarcomancy
3 Paladin Class

3 Life of Toshiro Umezawa
4 Trial of Ambition
4 Omen of the sea

2 Detention Sphere
4 Estrid’s Invocation
3 Aminatou, the Fateshifter

4 Brainstorm
2 Cling to Dust
2 Timeless Dragon
3 Prismatic Ending
3 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
3 Force of Negation

4 Serra’s Sanctum
2 Scrubland
1 Tundra
1 Underground Sea
3 Delta
3 Strand
4 Flats
4 Vista
4 Snow Swamp
1 Snow Island
2 Snow Plains

[FTW]

Once you're in WBu, is Omen of the Sea (splash color) better than Hidden Stockpile (card selection + bodies in WB), Enlightened Tutor (card selection in W), or Warlock Class (card selection in B)?

[Reeplcheep]

Once you're in WBu, is Omen of the Sea (splash color) better than Hidden Stockpile (card selection + bodies in WB), Enlightened Tutor (card selection in W), or Warlock Class (card selection in B)?

I think omen is necessary to support fow without running too many 3 drops. Having a 2 drop that is relevant when removal is not is also good for the curve.

[FTW]

What about Lithoform Blight? That's a black cantrip. Does "loses all abilities and types" happen at a lower layer than "becomes Island", so that Thespian's Stage would copy something with no abilities?

[Reeplcheep]

An alternative package I have thought of is a self-mill/zombies engine.


Warlock Class
The Modern Age
Tymaret Calls the Dead

Master of Death
Cabal Therapy
Narfi, Betrayer King

This lets you support blue without needing blue pips.

[kombatkiwi]

iirc cards like Stage and Vesuva are "hard" copies, while Spreading Seas would turn Field into a "soft" copy. So if you have a Stage target a "hard" copied Vesuva as Island, your Stage becomes a "hard" copy of Island...but if you have a Stage target a "soft" copied Field of the Dead as Island (due to Spreading Seas), you get a fully operational Stage as Field through Spreading Seas. This makes a card like Spreading Seas a really bad answer, even when you're not getting blown out by FoV. The other issue here is putting down a lot of the prison on cmc 2 vs Blast Zone. Assuming the rules work like this still, Seas remains a poor answer to Depths.

This hard/soft distinction has no real basis in the rules at all. How this works is because copy effects apply in layer 1 before any other modifications, so the only attributes that get copied are the printed values of the card (so if you copy a Field with spreading seas on it you just get a unmodified Field of the Dead, because spreading seas modifies Field in a later layer), plus how they are modified by any other copy effects (so if Stage copies Vesuva which originally copied a mountain, then your Stage becomes a Mountain, not a "blank" Vesuva)

What about Lithoform Blight? That's a black cantrip. Does "loses all abilities and types" happen at a lower layer than "becomes Island", so that Thespian's Stage would copy something with no abilities?

The only relevant thing is that both of them happen at a later layer than layer 1, so "becomes copy of target permanent" will ignore both Seas/Blight and give you an unmodified copy of the original card

Generally I think that Detention Sphere is probably the best anti-field card. Virulent Plague may be okay too (SB) but it has far less utility in other matchups and like you have identified it's a nonbo here when you're trying to win with your own tokens.

[Reeplcheep]

Displacer Kitten
3U
Creature - Cat Beast
Avoidance - Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, exile up to one target nonland permanent you control, then return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control.
"Isn't she the cutest thing you've almost seen?"
- Doen, purveyor of exotic pets

This could let us go away from the token stuff into a combo control shell.

Draws our deck with baubles and 3feri.

Still a very strong value engine with stuff like omen of the sea

Aminatou plus serras sanctum lets you generate mana and storm off.

Our kill condition can be Oath of Kaya so you don’t need any bad cards (other than the baubles and maybe a few petals)

[Reeplcheep]

The “exploding kittens” shell would be:


Part A (blink)
4 Kitten

Part B (permanents to flicker)
4 Teferi, Time Raveler
4 Aminatou, the Fateshifter
4 Omen of the Sea
4 Spirited Companion

Part C (free artifacts or W enchantments)
4 Mishra’s Bauble
3 Lotus Petal
4 Curse of Silence
4 Paladin Class
4 Swift Reconfiguration

Part D (Wincon)
3 Oath of Kaya


The argument to play this over say Aluren would be that perhaps all the pieces are better played fairly/by themselves. And your combo pieces are also protection.

[FTW]

I don't see the reason to make your enabler cost 4 mana and die to any spot removal when these weren't problems before. This is EDH tech. In legacy it seems win-more when it works, lose-more otherwise.

It was never necessary to be token-blink. KombatKiwi's version showed Estrid+Aminatou works blinking value control enchantments instead. I thought tokens was something you wanted to do. If you don't want tokens, you don't need Kitten either. Oath is playable either way.