Well, since my deck was mentioned a couple of times already I guess I wouldn’t mind giving this contest a whirl.

This deck is called Nausea. The reason for that is because of Solidarity actually. I figured that I would use a worthy name for a worthy deck. The idea actually came from Alix (Ob. Freely) in that, if any of you have ever heard the Solidarity story, Nausea was the reason why Solidarity was boarded in. I’m not saying that Solidarity beats this deck, because it doesn’t, I’m saying that I really like that story. XD

So here is the list(Edited Dec 29, 2005):

Nausea 2.1
// Mana
4 City of Traitors
1 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Taiga
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Land Grant
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual

// Cantrip
3 Darkwater Egg
4 Chromatic Sphere
3 Shadowblood Egg
4 Sleight of Hand
3 Night's Whisper

// Other Shit
4 Burning Wish
3 Tendrils of Agony
4 Helm of Awakening
4 Spoils of the Vault


// Sideboard
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Night's Whisper
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Promise of Power
1 Regrowth
1 Infernal Contract
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Simplify
1 Echoing Ruin
1 Firebolt
4 Xantid Swarm


Now for the fun part: the rambling. Now I have been fiddling with this deck for the good part of 2 months now, and I still don’t consider it optimal. This is what actually led me to post this in the Open Discussion forum before I had actual tournament records and thorough testing to back-up my conclusions. As it stands though, the deck has been performing well and it is great fun to play (that is if you like killing your opponent before they blink.)

The average goldfish of this deck has actually turned out to be 2.5. That is fast. Really fast. For a format that likes to sit around and wait until turn 4-5 to kill someone, that is too fast. Of course you will fizzle and of course your opponent might stop you, but you can hold your own with this deck trust me.

This deck has fought through hell and back and still won. IBA was playing some stupid Mono-white deck the other day with 4 Abeyance and 3 Orim’s Chant plus a few Aura of Silence and it still ended at an even record, when any of that should have smashed me. I’m not saying this deck is unbelievably resilient to everything, because its not, every deck has weaknesses. I’m just saying you can fight through a lot of it.

Card Choices:
I’m only going over debatable cards, not things like Dark Ritual.

City of Traitors: I really don’t know what brought me to put this card into the deck, but once I did, I never looked back. The card makes a first turn Helm very plausible. It pops Eggs with ease and without you having to use precious colored mana on them. It is simply acceleration. Acceleration is always good for combo decks, right?

Spoils of the Vault: This card is Legacy’s Vampiric Tutor, a very weak one mind you. Seriously though this card is the best Black tutor effect in the format. At least I can’t think of a better one.

Darkwater Eggs and Chromatic Sphere: These cards under Helm are the most amazing cantrips you can find. They are free, they fix mana, and they draw a card. You don’t get much better than that.

Helm of Awakening: I think this might be the most popular card for Legacy combo decks. The card is everywhere in the N&D forum. All of the Tendrils decks use it, why part from the crowd when they are going where you want to go?

Brainstorm: There was a point in time where I tested Impulse in this slot, but Brainstorm is just to powerful to deny when combined with Land Grant. Draw three cards, put back 2 lands, and then Land Grant. Now that’s a deal I will do more than once.

Meditate: This card seems to have been questioned in my thread about this deck, so I will go over why this card is nuts. Drawing four cards will almost always win you the game, unless of course you are unlucky. For 3 mana you draw 4 cards. Under Helm it’s for 2 mana. Another reason, there are very few things that a lot of the decks in this format can do to you with an extra turn. If you do end up passing the turn after playing a Meditate, have no fear because you will most likely be going off when the clock comes back to you.

Now I am going to go through a goldfish game.

Game - My opening hand is actually not spectacular. Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Brainstorm, Chrome Mox, Bayou, and 2 Land Grants. Assuming I’m on the play, my first turn is Bayou, pass.

For my next turn I draw a Darkwater Egg. Could have been better, but we’re just dealing with what’s given. So I Land Grant to find a Tropical Island then Brainstorm with it. Well off of the Brainstorm I draw Tendrils, Meditate, and Spoils. Looks like I stacked the deck when I wasn’t looking. So I put back the Mox and the Tendrils because I will hopefully find a Tendrils by the time I’m done going off, and Mox is not helpful right now. I kept the Egg because right now I have to way of casting Meditate if I decide to go off this turn. Now here is the tricky part: deciding whether to go off now or next turn with Tendrils in hand. In most cases I will want to wait the turn because my opponent will not likely cripple me on turn 2.

So I take my next turn, drawing the Tendrils on the top of the library. Now my hand looks like Tendrils, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Meditate, Darkwater Egg, Land Grant, and Spoils of the Vault. My first move is to Land Grant, grabbing the final Trop. I did this because I don’t want to risk removing the Trop. with Spoils. After finding the Trop. I Dark Ritual and Spoils for Helm of Awakening. I find the Helm 13 cards down, so now I’m at 8. I play Helm with the 2 black mana in my pool. I lay the second Trop. down and play and pop egg. Leaving me with 1 blue and 1 black in my pool. I draw a brainstorm. Well that seems pretty good. I cast Brainstorm. Now I have to find another draw spell or a mana fixer in order to keep going with Meditate. I draw Dark Ritual, Spoils, and Chromatic Sphere. I put back Tendrils and Spoils of the Vault. Cast Dark Ritual with the single black floating in my pool. Then I play and pop Chromatic Sphere drawing a Tendrils that I put back and then casting Meditate with one black still left in pool. Note that now I have achieved threshold and have the single black I need to cast the Cabal Ritual in my hand. Also note that I have a storm count of 9, so drawing 4 City of Traitors is OK because I can just cast Cabal Ritual then Tendrils. Which is exactly what I do despite the fact that I drew Night’s Whisper, Lotus Petal, Spoils, and City of Traitors off of the Meditate. This leaves room for you to potentially go off again next turn by Spoilsing for a Meditate if you’re feeling lucky.

So that was a turn 3 win. Remarkably, that was a mediocre hand. Also to note, I drew almost everything that I needed to make that hand as amazing as it turned out to be. This is one factor in the deck: luck.

Now I have one last thing to do, match-ups.

Well the match-ups for this deck are actually extraordinary. Against almost any aggro deck in this format, this deck just wins to fast.

Vial Goblins: 7-3 My favor. This was shocking. I actually thought that Goblins might be able to race me a fair amount of the time, but I just ran over them. I will admit wasteland plus mass beats is tough to get around. I pulled some games out while at a very dangerous life total.

Solidarity: 6-4 My favor. This match-up was very fun and interesting to play. There was a game where I went off, being careful not to play more than 10 spells, and he just went off in response. In is going off though he Wished for Stifle and Forced my original copy just for more storm, just to Brain Freeze me for around 180. All in all I had a favorable match-up because I would go off on turn 2 when he had 1 land in play or on turn 3 when he had 2. It was very hard for him to keep up. But there were my mediocre hands that just got ran over by his.

Welder Survival: 9-1 My favor. I think this match up was slightly distorted because I didn’t fizzle once the entire 10 games. In actuality I believe that it should be around 8-2 or 7-3. The game he did win though was when he got a turn 2 Sundering Titan…that was redonkulous.

Enchantress: I didn’t write the match-up down, but it was something ridiculous like 8-2 in my favor. He won very few games while we sat there. There were games where Echoing Truth actually won me the game. Of course, there were games where I lost because I couldn’t find the Echoing Truth. I will note that Enchantress can abuse a Helm like crazy, so you might want to not play the Helm until you are going off, or know that you are going off next turn.

ATS: 5-5 This match-up wasn't all to amazing. You can race the counters most of the time. Also I got very unlucky during this round of testing.

Landstill: 6-4 Your favor. They have a lot of dead cards. When I say a lot, I mean a lot. They have 8 counters, and 4 Standstills. Thats about it. You can give them a run for there money. Second turn Standstill could mean trouble. Post sideboard, you side in either Duress or Xantid Swarm. I think it should be Duress just because they might leave in Swords to deal wtih Swarms.

Well thats my rap yo.

Roop