Took a rough new brew concept to Card Kingdom Seattle Monday Night Legacy. Went 3-1, beating D&T, Cephalid Breakfast, and Sneak and Show. Lost to Elves, but I actually felt more favored in that matchup than the 3 I actually won - felt like I lost to a combination of both strong play and excellently aligned hands. Idea is still loose but thought I'd share it here for potential feedback; I'll include general thesis, list, and match specifics below.
General Thesis: People have been noting for a while that most of the good proactive cards in UWx control decks are at the 3+ mana slot. Rather than trying to play Staff of the Storyteller or Faerie Mastermind, etc, I decided to play essentially mono 3/4 drops and use the "space below" for a cascade package. Preboard, you're cascading into Wheel of Fate so that it's an effective 8x Day's Undoing 7x Narset-Effect Turbo-Wheels deck that wheels into the control cards necessary to mop-up what's left over. Post-board, you can replace the Wheel of Fates to play a UW control deck that cascades into the appropriate hosers for the matchup Turn 2 (be it Containment Priest, Null Rod, etc).
With the potential exception of Alms Collector, the eyebrow-raising element isn't the spells as they're pretty much all "bangers" doing largely established powerful stuff (and yeah I'm slightly cheating by categorizing "Ardent Plea" in that way, but it's being used here as a 2-land Wheel of Fortune with a post-board transformational ability so I'll go ahead and call that 'established legacy power-level'). The real trick is here the dependability of the manabase supporting them in these numbers. I believe the combinatorics work here though, and so far even playing against D&T-level mana-disruption has felt reasonable.
If Brainstorm and Ancient Tomb are the two biggest largely independent pillars of the format, this is me attempting to power a control deck off Ancient Tomb instead of Brainstorm, and working a manabase and spell-suite around that conceit.
Moxfield (may be altered from list below as I toy around with idea): https://www.moxfield.com/decks/ccUPYg5a50eV2zUDRNKtJw
Planeswalkers(10)
1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3x Narset, Parter of Veils
4x Teferi, Time Raveler
2x The Wandering Emperor
Creatures(8)
4x Alms Collector
4x Solitude
Sorceries(10)
4x Day's Undoing
4x Supreme Verdict
2x Wheel of Fate
Instants(4)
4x Force of Will
Enchantments(4)
4x Ardent Plea
Lands(24)
4x Ancient Tomb
2x Karakas
4x Mystic Gate
1x Otawara, Soaring City
4x Remote Farm
4x Saprazzan Skerry
4x Skycloud Expanse
1x Tundra
Sideboard(15)
Companion: 1x Kaheera, the Orphanguard
1x Ashiok, Dream Render
1x Chill
1x Containment Priest
1x Ethersworn Canonist
2x Force of Vigor
1x Gideon of the Trials
1x Inevitable Betrayal
1x Llawan, Cephalid Empress
1x Nezahal, Primal Tide
1x Null Rod
1x Rest in Peace
1x Sorcerous Spyglass
1x Torpor Orb
Report From Monday:
You'll have to afford me a few liberties here as I played these games on Monday night and I'm typing this up on Wednesday so I may hand-wave over elements I don't remember intimately or make some small mischaracterizations if my memory is off.
Match 1: D&T
Game 1 - I reveal a Kaheera Companion, and my opponent and I banter about why I would have a Kaheera Companion and if I was playing Cat Tribal. I flash in an Alms Collector Turn 2 and my opponent says that he's excited that it actually is Cat Tribal. I untap Turn 3, Solitude his Thalia, and Days Undoing. Game becomes a laugher.
Game 2 - I remember there being a game 2 that I lost. I could be wrong because part of me also remembers winning in 2, but it feels more courteous to err on the side of humility and regardless I'm still at least ... 75% sure there was a game 2 that I lost. Again, it's been a couple days.
Game 3 (2?) - I cascade into a Torpor Orb and Supreme Verdict his board once or twice. He eventually answers Orb and Imperial Recruiters for Spirit of the Labyrinth and plays Spirit alongside Aether Vial on an empty board. I Companion Tax Kaheera to hand, Force of Vigor both Vial and Spirit and eventually Undoing him down to an 8-1 'cards-in-hand-advantage'.
Match 2: Cephalid Breakfast
Game 1 - I remember him combo-killing me on either Turn 2 or Turn 3. I also remember thinking that if I had sequenced it better on my turn I could have potentially survived his combo turn, but I don't remember the details or why I thought that.
Game 2 - He laughs when I play Llawan, Cephalid Empress (Turn 2 I believe). I eventually Ardent Plea Cascade into both Rest in Peace and Torpor Orb, and he moves onto the Urza's Saga Plan. I start bashing in with Double-Exalted Cephalid Empress. He comes close to stablizing but I play a 3rd Ardent Plea to force him to Chump with his last Construct and win the game against Cephalid Breakfast with Cephalid Beatdowns. He then reveals his end-of-game hand complete with 6 Blue Creatures he was unable to cast.
Game 3 - I quickly establish Rest in Peace and Torpor Orb again via Cascades, and we end up playing a long and complicated fair-game. He eventually bounces the Rest in Peace, mills himself sufficiently to produce several combat-ready Narcomoebas, and we play some grindy Control + Beaters (some with Lifelink) vs. Beaters + Equipment (some with Lifelink). I believe I navigate game into a position where I won't end up losing and he only has somewhere around 9 to 12 cards left in deck but - likely my fault - we end up going to time with him at 42 life. I attack with Solitude to make sure I gain the life on my turn vs. attacking Narcomoebas, but I miss the exalted trigger on the board. My opponent declares a block, and the judge who is one of the handful directly watching our game (since we are one of the two tables that went to time) points out the missed trigger. An issue then arises with the ruling where, since (and I'm not a judge so you'll have to forgive me), since it's a mandatory trigger the gamestate is simply "updated" to include the +1/+1, and my opponent is not afforded the ability to reselect blockers as I never "had to" announce the trigger for it to apply. I don't think this changes the outcome of the game in any way but it's certainly discouraging to my opponent as he blocked with a 2/1 Narcomoeba under the assumption that the attacker was a 3/2, and now he's effectively being punished because I was too lazy to remember there was a Exalted trigger, which I did explicitly declare over and over again in the previous game. I understand the "onus was on him" nature of the ruling, but it's a feelbad and I don't like feelbads, you know, and assuming the ruling was accurate it does seem to me like it creates a bit of an ethical hazard? Like, if my interest was purely competitive, under this set of rules, why wouldn't I intentionally make great pains to declare the trigger again and again and neglect to declare it when I thought it would benefit me for my opponent to assume the trigger rulings worked the way they did before that update some years back? Anyways, I end this game both feeling good about the deck, great about the fun gamestates it generated, and kind of bad about the aftertaste of the ruling confusion at the end.
Match 3: Elves
Game 1 - I completely fail to register the fact I've played against this opponent before, he was on Elves the last time, and is still playing with a Craterhoof Playmat, so I keep a hand that's suboptimal vs. Elves and he gets a quick combo-win. I go to game 2 pretty happy though, as I feel my 4x Sol-Land Powered Supreme Verdict control deck with Cascade Access to Hate Pieces is pretty favored in the matchup.
Game 2 - Turns out control deck feels pretty good in the matchup. I eventually start pressuring him with Solitude and a few Samurai Tokens and he scoops.
Game 3 - I keep a hand with 2x FoW, Turn 2 Cascader for Hatepiece followed up by Turn 3 Supreme Verdict, all with exactly the cards in my opener. I feel fantastic, and I keep. My opponent plays a Turn 1 Dryad Arbor and passes the turn. None of the cards I kept are Solitude so I can't punish that, but that's fine, so I just play a Sol-Land and pass the turn back. My opponent starts his T2 with Allosaurus Shepard, turning off my FoW package, but that still seems okay to me even without Solitude, follows up with a Gaea's Cradle and spills out his hand of little green men. On my turn I Ardent Plea with both Torpor Orb and Containment Priest in my deck, and I hit Containment Priest. I then pass the turn back, still ready to wipe the board on my Turn 3. On his Turn 3 he plays Craterhoof from Hand and I take 21.
I lost this round, but I left it feeling like it was still a positive
Match 4: Show and Tell
Game 1 - He plays Show and Tell. I bring in Alms Collector. He brings in Griselbrand. I solitude Griselbrand on his turn like a dope and he dazes it. On my turn I just solitude Griselbrand again and start beating down with Alms Collector. He scoops after a turn or 2.
Game (2?/3?) - Plus or minus some fighting on the stack, I remember it going Containment Priest, Wheel-Combo, Scoop.
Deck seemed sufficiently powerful and fun. Was accidentally pretty budget as you really don't need the 1x Tundra. The combination of spells was obviously reasonable in a casting-cost-agnostic way, the only question was how the manabase fared when actually under pressure from an opponent, or when the game went long, etc, etc, and I never seemed to really stumble over the mana save for maybe being Ported off-white for a turn lategame vs. D&T before just getting yet another whitesource. Playing 4x Supreme Verdict when you can cast it pretty consistently off 3 lands is just a nice feeling, and cascading into various silver-bullets is quite satisfying.
Will probably run it back at some point. All critical feedback welcome.
Last edited by Rationalist; 05-04-2023 at 08:52 AM.
Looks like a glorious mess but the good kind. I like.
Haven't read all of your report so forgive me if you mentioned some things already.
Some assorted thoughts:
Is Alms Collector better then Hullbreacher?
Do you want some Brazen Borrowers or are 4x3feries + other removal good enough?
Would be another win con at the cost of Kaheera.
On that note, maybe go to 80 cards with Yorion? Not sure if that works well with this plan.
Skycloud Expanse with ETB tapped and Mystic Gate with both ETB tapped + Tomb seems really bad.
Lands I'd rather play:
Adarkar Wastes
Hallowed Fountain
Hengegate Pathway
Seachrome Coast
Celestial Colonnade maybe as one off.
As a card without context, no. Here however he has 4 Toughness, immunity to Redblast, and enables a Companion that in turn enables Force of Vigor. Not objectively worth the additional mana but in a deck with 12 Sol Lands 4-mana doesn't feel like that big an ask for the security and side benefits. A flash blocker to protect planeswalkers is also not entirely irrelevant.Originally Posted by Zoid
So far in practice (well, the 4 matches of it) 4x Solitude + 4x Supreme Verdict + 2x Wandering Emporer + 4x Teferi + 1x JtMS has been sufficient creature removal, but if you mean non-creature permanent removal that's certainly a shortcoming maindeck.
I don't think I could make this manabase work if I had to scale it up by 6 or 7 cards.
No, that being good is the whole premise of the deck. (See below)
These lands all seem very bad. For reference, do bear in mind that I'm playing with the 4th Mystic Gate before even touching the 1st Tundra, and I have no idea why you'd want to play most of these cards over just more Tundras.
Skycloud Expanse Consistently casts either of the 1WU spells off of any Sol Land, including Ancient Tomb. In fact, Skycloud is the entire reason why an Ancient Tomb 4x Supreme Verdict deck can make sense. Remember, there is nowhere in the deck where you're trying to cast a spell with a U or W casting cost, so Skycloud is strictly better than Tundra here outside of when you're trying to cast 3-mana spell off of exactly Triple-Skycloud-Expanse, which is combinatorically unlikely.
Skycloud >> Tundra > Every single land you listed, with regards to casting the selected spells.
Similarly, Mystic Gate is what lets Remote Farm cast Narset, or Skerry and Ancient Tomb hardcast Endurance, or even provide the double-white for Supreme Verdict.
All of these lands are worse than Tundra, and the entire premise of the deck is that Skycloud and Mystic Gate, here, are better than Tundra. The combinatorics of the manabase absolutely would not work without filter lands. It sounds like you think I'm not running Tundra for some kind of budget reason. I'm not. That's not what this is about. This is accidentally a budget deck in that I didn't even add the Tundra until the last minute, but that's not a *goal* of the deck that I'm knowingly making sub-optimal manabase decisions for. I'm actively choosing these filter lands because I believe I have created a manabase that serves this set of spells (in these numbers at least) better than traditional manabases do.
Filter Lands are usually bad because they can't, for example, cast Ponder (or similar cards). I'm not playing ponder (or any similar cards).
The only place where any of the filter lands here fall short of Tundra in any reasonable way (ignoring specifically 3x Skycloud and nothing else or specifically 3x Mystic Gate and nothing else) is that Mystic Gate + Ancient Tomb fails to cast exactly Day's Undoing where Tundra would succeed. That's an extremely niche case to justify downgrading Mystic Gate to a Tundra. The filter lands are the deck. If you replaced them with 8 Tundras you would fail to cast your spells as consistently.
Interesting tech.
I like how Kaheera enables greedy pitch costs (like SB Force of Vigor).
Using Ardent Plea to tutor into singleton SB pieces is cute too.
Is the 4th Mystic Gate worse than the 2nd Tundra? Skycloud seems more consistent. Here's my reasoning...
On 2 lands, Skycloud Expanse is good with every other land in the deck except other Skyclouds.
Skycloud + Tomb = 1WU.
Skycloud + Skerry = UUW
Skycloud + Farm = WWU
Skycloud + other land = WU
Skycloud + Skycloud = dead (3/23 other lands)
But on 2 lands, Mystic Gate has more fail cases:
Gate + Tomb = 3
Gate + Gate = 2
Gate + Skerry = UUU or UUW or UWW
Gate + Farm = WWW or WWU or WUU
Gate + Skycloud = WU
Gate + other land = WU or WW or UU
That's 7 bad pairings instead of 3. Not making 1WU with Tomb is a big drawback. You could have multiple Tombs and Gates in play and be stuck on 0 colors.
Compare that to Tundra
Tundra + Tomb = 2W or 2U
Tundra + Skerry = UUW or UUU
Tundra + Farm = WWU or WWW
Tundra + Skycloud = WU
Tundra + Karakas = WU or WW
Tundra + Otawara = WU or UU
Tundra + Tundra = WU or WW or UU
Tundra has no bad pairings. It's only marginally worse at filtering some of the monocolored lands (can't turn into double of the other color).
By running fewer copies of Mystic Gate (not necessarily 0), you reduce some of the fail cases.
I admit that the things I type late at night might not always be the most well thought out.
I missed the filtering aspect which is indeed very relevant.
However, I'm not sure if it's worth possibly bricking yourself as FTW listed above.
Looking at the list, there is actually not that much which uses 2 colorless mana.
Doesn't that actually make Skycloud Expanse a requirement to make proper use off Tomb?
Looking at the depletion lands, I would guess the only thing that you need to be able to cast asap with 2 mana of the same color asap Verdict.
1 depletion land + Tundra still lets you cast most cards.
With the depletion lands depleting themselves, being cut off from colored mana by Wasteland is also a big threat.
In the end I guess it is a meta call and needs to be tested further.
Yeah, it's all good man. No personal judgement. Between you and me many of Phil Gallagher's worst videos are because I'm brewing something at 3am, make it into a mess that obviously won't work, and decide to just give him $60 to see if he can fix it so I can convince myself to put it away, go to bed, and move on to better things. We're all compromised deck builders on low sleep.
(Honestly I think I've done maybe 20 or so donations this way so far, so in all seriousness if he's playing a trash fire there's probably something like a 50% chance it was specifically me going "and then I'll cast Swords to Plowshares through my own Sanctum Pre ... aah, fuck it" before going to sleep)
I responded to that above. I think it bricks less often.
There's nothing that uses 2 colored mana either. There's no 2-mana spells.
Not for Alms Collector, or Wandering Emporer, or Day's Undoing, or Hardcast Solitude, or Hardcast Force of Will (the latter 2 of which come up more often in a 12 Sol Land deck).
You're not wrong that Tomb is marginally worse here than in a colorless deck with the exact same spread of CMCs though.
Well the filter lands are there specifically to give flexibility to that "2 mana of the same color" thing. It's their interaction with the Masques Lands that are providing the backbone of the manabase.
The only thing that depletion land + Tundra casts (of the spells in the deck) that depletion land + Mystic Gate does not is exactly Day's Undoing. That's it; one specific card off of one specific combination of 2 lands (not counting sideboard singletons that are primarily intended as cascade targets). That's not insignificant, you are right that it is a real shortcoming of the manabase, but I do believe it is more niche than what Mystic Gate is providing as a land that makes either UU or WW in a deck with 18 Maindeck cards with either UU or WW in their casting cost, and 11 Mono-Color lands being pressured by 4 Ancient Tomb to match the appropriate colors of the cards.
Oh definitely. I'm definitely making choices here that are making me (theoretically at least) better against a general field at the cost of making myself weaker to wasteland. At least anecdotally, however, the deck's manabase seemed to function fine when under direct attack from Death and Taxes, and Lands kind of isn't a huge presence anymore these days, so I feel like, coming from a world of decks that evolved in an environment where a lot of respect had to be given to wasteland, as Lands seems to fade in popularity making choices to increase a deck's general power level at the cost of being weaker to wasteland may well be an appropriate direction for a lot of decks to move.
Gate + Gate is nonfunctional, but Tundra + Tundra isn't really casting anything the deck is playing either. There are no 2-drops, aside from the occasional sideboard Containment Priest that is usually cascaded out.
Tundra + Tomb is indeed better than Gate + Tomb at casting specifically Day's Undoing.
You say Tundra "doesn't have any bad pairings", but Tundra + Farm doesn't make UUW, which is what Narset is actually asking for. Also, on 3 lands, we're playing with 8x cards that demand WW and 5 Mono-Blue Lands. Combining Narset, Solitude, and Supreme Verdict (and even things like hardcast Force off Farm + Tomb) just seems like it's coming up more than specifically Day's Undoing off of Tomb+Gate. The deck never needs to make a lot of the combinations that are preventing "bad pairings" in the list above, like UW, or W2. Those spells aren't in the deck.
The deck primary wants to make
1UW x8
1WWU x4
3UU x4
3WW x4
3W x4
2U x4
1UU x3
2WW x2
2UU x1
I suspect if the outputs on those tables were weighted appropriately for these outputs and also included 3-land combinations, Mystic Gate would be clear standout over Tundra.
Now there's still a non-zero chance that I'm wrong about the 4th Gate vs. the 2nd Tundra specifically for Day's Undoing off 2-lands as the weighting in that assessment isn't pure combinatorics but also play-patterns, but at the moment I don't feel I am. If experience starts punishing me for making Day's Undoing slightly less castable, however, I'll keep the option in mind. Overall cards like Narset are what I'm a little more focused on making castable at the moment, though, and it would take a more persuasive case to convince me I'm wrong there (but which I obviously would appreciate if I am).
Now consider multiples.
2 Gate + Tomb casts nothing.
2 Tundra + Tomb casts 2UW or 2WW or 2UU. (Almost every card in your deck)
Gate + Tundra + Tomb does the same
Gate + 2 Tomb casts nothing
Tundra + 2 Tomb casts Wandering Emperor, Alms Collector, Day's Undoing, SB stuff
I focused on 2 land combinations because your manabase is very weak to Wasteland. You don't want to be in a situation where 1 Wasteland vs 3 lands can be used strategically so you're stuck on 0 colors of mana. Or that you can't cast anything until turn 4 vs Wasteland + Daze. This is a risk of conditional lands.
Tundra + Tundra is no worse than any other non-Sol Lands.
As I acknowledged, Tundra's only drawback is not filtering the depletion lands into double of the other color (eg Narset). That seems fairly rare, but perhaps it comes up more than I anticipated.
I do wonder if say a 2nd Tundra is better than 4 Gates. They get worse in multiples. Did not say to cut all Gates for Tundra.
Intuition was useful for me when I brewed mono U 8Twist. It helps assemble the combo, or it can put Force in hand to protect the combo. It might be good here too. It would be another reason to favor Tundra + Tomb over Gate + Tomb.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote