Doomsday Prison Control

[Laser Brains]

Doomsday Prison Control

Here’s a wildly original complex brew that I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks that will absolutely bend your mind. It’s a profoundly perplexing deck to pilot and that might be why it’s so fun to play. Every deck you play it against is like solving a giant jigsaw puzzle.

Although I’ve been tuning it for weeks now there’s definitely a lot of room for improvement and I’m hoping you all can help me tune it.

As of lately I’ve been playing it against Money Ball Black and Goblins and it can definitely hold its own when I’m not making mistakes. My matchups keep getting better as I’m learning how to play against them. I’ve had some losses but the more I play it the more I keep beating these decks. Pre-sideboard it can beat both of these decks.

//Namesake: 4
4x Doomsday

//Win Con: 2
1x Black Knight
1x Funeral Charm / Metamorphose

//Search: 9
4x Impulse
4x Portent
1x Sleight of Hand

//Disruption: 14
4x Duress
4x Gerrard’s Verdict
4x Mana Leak
1x Counterspell
1x Dromar's Charm

//Removal: 8
4x Swords to Plowshares
1x Diabolic Edict
1x Vindicate
1x Vicious Hunger
1x Infest

//Utility: 4
3x Soldevi Digger
1x Renewed Faith

//Mana Base: 19
4x Dromar’s Cavern
4x Polluted Delta
4x Swamp
2x Gemstone Mine
2x Undiscovered Paradise
2x Darkwater Catacombs
1x Island

Maybe Board:
1x Cremate
1x Rootwater Thief
1x Orim’s Chant
1x Seal of Cleansing
1x Absorb
1x Memory Lapse
1x Fatigue
1x Pox
1x Metamorphose
1x Tormod’s Crypt
1x Unburden
1x Vindicate
1x Vision Charm
1x Ebony Charm
1x Last Caress
1x Extract


How To Play:
The deck has two stages. In the first stage you are disrupting your opponent with removal and counter magic while searching for at least 4-5 land and a Doomsday. Once you get to 4-5 land you can cast Doomsday. I would really recommend 5 sources of land, if you only had 4 when you cast Doomsday you probably should put another in your pile. As long as you have 3 land to cast Doomsday it doesn’t matter if the other two land are in your hand, you can play them later. Once you cast Doomsday the second stage begins and you are building a pile of cards to control the board and if you haven’t already drawn them at least one win con and a Soldevi Digger.

Soldevi Digger
Soldevi Digger is clutch here and quite confusing to learn how to use at first, but the strategy is to build a pile based on your current situation of any combination of removal and counters that you can keep Diggering to the bottom of your library so that you never have a dead card unlike your unfortunate opponent. One thing to consider when building your pile is that you need at least one card that you can cast over and over and keep Diggering to the bottom of your library or you will deck yourself. If you choose all counter magic and Vindicate and your opponent stops casting spells and permanents for you to counter and remove you will deck yourself. So you need to include at least one card that doesn’t require a target like Renewed Faith or Dromar’s Charm so that you can keep casting and Diggering.

Win Con:
You are wondering how Black Knight and/or Funeral Charm and/or Metamorphose are win cons.

Black Knight
Black Knight was chosen over other creatures like Hypnotic Specter because he can’t be Plowed. If your only win con is removed from the game you lose or tie. Using a creature as the win con is better than spells like Drain Life because it is less mana intensive but mostly because it can be cast once and it can continually do it’s dirty work so you won’t have to keep drawing and recasting it hogging up one of your precious removal or counter magic draws. If Black Knight is Bolted or Smothered you can simply Digger him back into your deck. Last Caress could be used but it is mana intensive.

In the event your opponent isn’t playing white and you are not in fear of STP you can side in Rootwater Thief and butcher your opponent’s deck while you beat them down slowly. In this case you could side in Extract in the place of Funeral Charm / Metamorphose cast it over and over and really go to town taking threats out of their deck like artifact and graveyard hate.

Funeral Charm
The Funeral Charm win con is really cool! The idea here is to put Funeral Charm on the bottom of your pile. Because Funeral Charm is an instant you can cast it during your opponent’s draw phase forcing them to discard the card they just drew before they can cast it. And because they now have no cards in your deck you can Digger it and next turn you’ll draw it again. This can be done over and over until your opponent is decked. Basically your opponent will just have to concede. This is not a good idea if your opponent is playing a lot of burn spells because cards like Lightning Bolt and Incinerate can be cast in response to your Funeral Charm. Also, be careful of cards like Naturalize and Disenchant. If they take out your Digger you die.

Metamorphose
Likewise Orim’s Chant, Metamorphose and Fatigue from the sideboard can also soft lock. Metamorphose might even be better than Funeral Charm. If you cast it over and over every turn they keep drawing the same card. Let say they have a threat like a creature you Metamorphose it to the top of their deck and they keep drawing it.
If they choose to keep recasting it you can keep putting it back on top of their deck and beat them down with your Knight. If they choose to not recast it you can put a land on their deck and likewise they’ll keep drawing that same land every turn. If they choose to not replay the land you can put another land on top. When all of opponent’s lands and permanents are all stacked on top of their deck you now begin Diggering the rest of your graveyard (yes, the 5 you used from your pile and any that you cast from your hand after you cast Doomsday). From here on, every turn your opponent is unstacking all of those lands you stacked on top of his deck and he’s not drawing anything of value. Meanwhile you are beating down with your Knight and filling your hand with removal. Note, make sure that you have a spell that you can recast over and over with Digger like Renewed Faith because once your deck is down to one card you can keep casting it so you don’t deck yourself. Be aware that anytime you cast a spell from your hand it dilutes the deck and stops you from recasting the same spell over and over.

Protect Your Digger
One way to protect your Digger besides counter magic is to add an additional Digger to your pile. If one gets burned up you can cast the other and Digger the old one it back in. This is probably what you want to do on match two when your opponent is adding artifact hate into their deck. Also Vision Charm could be tight here. You can protect your Digger with it’s ability and it can double as a win con with it’s Mill ability, but you won’t be able to keep recasting it when it’s the last card in the pile if you use it to protect your Digger so make sure you have a Counterspell as a back up.

The Green Build
I toyed around with the idea of using 2 Gaea’s Blessing in your pile and axing Soldevi Digger entirely. I haven’t toyed around with it much but I think you can just keep putting the same cards back on top of your deck and draw off of Blessing. This however requires you to have Green in your deck and the mana base is really shaky as it is. Although you would get access to Sylvan Library or Mirri’s Guile which would essentially allow you to tutor up what ever card is in your deck every turn since your only running 5 card pile.

Let’s let the discussion begin! I’m wondering if there are better win cons and strategies. Perhaps the mana base can use some work. You’ll really have to give it some test piloting to figure it out because it is really hard to wrap your head around but damn is it fun! You can test pilot it here: https://moxfield.com/decks/ZgdXYHLTMEqefWMKmRTAew

[Laser Brains]

Nevermind / I'm stalling with this deck. I'm open to suggestions.

[ESG]

Have you looked through other Doomsday lists to compare approaches? I've seen Ebony Charm used, which I didn't understand at first, but your version seems like it will play out like Lantern Control. My main reservation is that a number of decks in the format have Naturalize, land destruction, or cards that can mill or mess with your library (such as Portent), so the position after Doomsday is going to be precarious. The Digger is a cool engine to get online and should take over in any position of board parity. Some of the soft locks should perform well in the short term. I have less confidence in them over a longer game. Fatigue seems like the strongest one, since you are repeatedly denying future cards. In this vein, I've seen Zur's Weirding and Wand of Denial used, but I like Fatigue better if it's repeatable. Soothsaying is a card that would give you great manipulation over your pile.

Edit: I played through some hands on Moxfield and found the mana more difficult than I think it should be. I would recommend Reflecting Pool because you're looking to play a lengthy game and don't want repeated damage from City of Brass. Undiscovered Paradise was a large tempo loss, and Gemstone Mine is pretty awkward in multiples. If you use more Darkwater Catacombs, you could make use of Fellwar Stone. Sometimes they'll be playing black or blue and you won't even need to filter the mana.