[Deck] Creeper (Creeping Renaissance Combo)

[Wanderlust]

Overview

Creeper is a combo deck that wins by using Creeping Renaissance to recur cheap artifacts such as Lion's Eye Diamond and Lotus Petal to build mana and a lethal storm count. The tutors Intuition and Artificer's Intuition are the true enablers of the deck. Intuition is generally used to tutor for Creeping Renaissance (one Intuition = up to 4x Creeping Renaissance effects) or the necessary Lion's Eye Diamonds for the combo loop to generate mana. Intuition also serves as a virtual win condition once you have achieved lethal storm by searching for Grapeshot and 2 Regrowth. Artificer's Intuition is similarly versatile: it can fill your battlefield and graveyard with mana and cantrip artifacts and can grab silver bullets. With Artificer's Intuition active during Creeping Renaissance loops, the deck becomes virtually fizzle-proof - it can produce large amounts of mana to find and repeatedly spin Sensei's Divining Top while shuffling away chaff via Artificer's Intuition activations. This process allows you to dig for your win condition or a tutor for it.

Creeper can goldfish as early as turn 2, but that requires an exceptionally good hand. It goldfishes consistently by turn 4.

Decklist (updated 2/5/13)

Core Spells (30)

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Mox Opal
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Artificer's Intuition
4 Intuition
4 Creeping Renaissance
2 Regrowth
1 Grapeshot


Flex slots (9) – meta-dependent

2 Muddle the Mixture
4 Conjurer's Bauble
1 Pithing Needle
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Meekstone


Lands (21)

1 City of Traitors
2 Ancient Tomb
1 Academy Ruins
4 Seat of the Synod
3 Tree of Tales
5 Blue Fetch
2 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
1 Island


Sideboard (updated 11/4/12):

4 Force of Will
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Engineered Explosives
3 Painter's Servant
3 Grindstone




History

Creeper was first brewed by sourcer Wanderlust (Conor Brown) from February-December, 2012. It has no major tournament finishes to date.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Pros of the primary combo:
1) Resilient to discard and countermagic. (Largely thanks to Creeping Renaissance's flashback.)
2) Life total irrelevant to the combo.
3) Immune to creature removal.
4) No dead cards. (Every core card is useful on it's own outside of the combo turn.)
5) Highly customizable. (Ample flex slots main for silver bullets, etc... Has access to various secondary combos - either main or post-board depending on the build.)
6) Resistant to Stifle. (If they Stifle Grapeshot's storm trigger, it can be revived via Regrowth or sent back into your library via Conjurer's Bauble to be tutored for again.)

Cons of the primary combo
1) Soft to graveyard hate.
2) Slow for a combo deck.
3) Can't protect itself with countermagic effectively. (Because of Lion's Eye Diamond.)
4) Most hate bears (Thalia, Teeg, Scavenging Ooze) must be answered before comboing.
5) If you want to maximize the mana you get out of your Lion's Eye Diamonds, you often have to activate them while Creeping Renaissance or Intuition is on the stack, before passing priority. This opens you up to getting blown out by countermagic. (If at all possible, always hold up enough mana, including LEDs, to be able to flashback a Creeping Renaissance next turn.)

The main deck flex slots

As a general rule, the deck wants as many artifacts as possible to maximize the effectiveness of Creeping Renaissance, Artificer's Intuition, and Mox Opal.

Secondary Combos:
There are at least three secondary combos that can function naturally within the deck:
1) Painted Stone (Grindstone + Painter's Servant)
Fits into the deck like a glove. However, both cards are bad on their own (although at least Grindstone can laboriously stock your graveyard for a Creeping Renaissance loop). The fatal weakness of the combo is its softness to creature removal. For the time being, probably best in the sideboard.
2) Sensei's/Sensei's loop with Locket of Yesterdays.
Only requires adding the Locket of Yesterdays to the deck. With a Locket of Yesterdays in play, a Sensei's Divining Top in your graveyard, a second Top in play/hand, and a third to in play/hand/on top of your library, you can infinitely draw one top with the other to generate storm.) The combo is wholly supported by Artificer's Intuition besides your final kill card.
3) Bomberman (Auriok Salvagers/Lion's Eye Diamond/Pyrite Spellbomb combo.)
Adding 3-4 Auriok Salvagers to the deck is a fairly minimal commitment for an additional game-winning threat, but it dies to Swords to Plowshares and makes the manabase more fragile.

Tutors/Cantrips/Manipulation:
Infernal Tutor – Update 12/14/12: Superseded by Regrowth. Regrowth is completely on-color and is always active without jumping through hoops. Infernal tutor was great when it was great, but wound up being my least favorite card in the deck. Hands with Infernal Tutor + Creeping Renaissance were just awkward. Hands with Infernal Tutor + Infernal Tutor were just atrocious. (Infernal Tutor was generally proven superior to Gamble / Burning Wish / Cunning Wish.)

Regrowth: A very recent inclusion to the deck. It has some nice qualities: it makes the clunky singleton Mystic Retrieval unnecessary and replaces 3 Infernal Tutor, freeing up valuable slots for silver bullet artifacts and more Conjurer's Baubles. It is less powerful but more flexible that Infernal Tutor. Getting back an Artificer's Intuition that has been Abrupt Decayed is the most valuable pre-combo use for it. It also pairs well with Intuition, both to ensure you can Intuition for a single card you need and also to allow for the line: Intuition for 3x Lion's Eye Diamond > Regrowth Intuition > Intuition for 3x Creeping Renaissance.

Brainstorm/Ponder – I'm surprisingly unimpressed with these cards in this deck. They often feel redundant with Sensei's Divining Top. They break the rule of “play as many artifacts as possible.”

Silver Bullets and other Artificer's Intuition Toolbox Options
(2-3 slots in the main deck can/should be devoted to silver bullets.)

Engineered Explosives – The most versatile toolbox option. It's only downside is that you have to blow up your own Artificer's Intuition to answer hate bears or Rest in Peace.

Pithing Needle – Could deserve a spot main depending on the meta. Notable uses include shutting off Scavenging Ooze, Tormod's Crypt, and Griselbrand.

Pyrite Spellbomb – Answers hate bears such as Thalia, Gaddock Teeg, and Scavenging Ooze, can zap Insectile Abberation and other beaters to buy some time, or just function as an expensive Conjurer's Bauble.

Aether Spellbomb – A less satisfactory answer to hate bears than Pyrite Spellbomb, but it can answer some threats out of Reanimator and Show and Tell decks.

Executioner's Capsule – Outright kills more problematic creatures than either of the spellbombs, but it can be stopped by Mother of Runes and has awkward mana requirements. Also, it can't cantrip.

Meekstone – Very strong in certain matchups such as Canadian Thresh and Team America. Once it resolves, either they don't flip their Delvers and avoid threshold for Mongeese, or all of their creatures become next-turn burn spells. Either way, it buys a lot of time. Probably best in the sideboard since it's narrow.

Tormod's Crypt / Nihil Spellbomb – Graveyard hate for Dredge, Reanimator, and other graveyard-reliant strategies. A necessary sideboard inclusion.

(Creeper doesn't want Relic of Progenitus or Grafdigger's Cage as they nerf your own combo.)

Locket of Yesterdays – stellar when you Intuition for 3x Creeping Renaissance. The card also opens the possibility of the infinite Sensei's/Sensei's loop. However, after playing with it in the main for a while, it hasn't seemed to add enough flexibility or speed to make up for its conditionality.

Gustha's Scepter – purpose #1: hide things (usually Creeping Renaissance or Intuition) from being discarded to your Lion's Eye Diamonds so that you can use that mana to cast the hidden card. Purpose #2: hide things from discard. Occasionally Gustha's Scepter felt awesome in testing, but more often than not something else would have been better.

Chalice of the Void – This deck can be built to combo off without casting 1cc spells but using cycling artifacts (Glassdusk Hulk or Architect of Will). Unfortunately, Sensei's Divining Top is the best card in the deck and Chalice @1 nerfs it.

Miscellaneous:
Ensnaring Bridge – because Creeper generally gets stronger the longer the game lasts, Ensnaring Bridge is surprisingly potent. Many decks are slowed to a crawl after an Ensnaring Bridge resolves, giving you ample time to answer hate bears or to attempt to combo until they run out of countermagic.

Helm of Awakening – Decent for goldfishing, but its symmetrical effect is a huge downside that renders it unplayable.

Protection:
Defense Grid – Very nearly excellent. However, Tempo decks often drop their creatures early, so they can just keep 3 mana open for Force of Will by the time you want to combo.

(The following all break the “play as many artifacts as possible” rule.)

Duress/Thoughtseize/Autumn's Veil/Orim's Chant/Silence – worth more testing.

Cabal Therapy – Maybe good with a singleton Shield Sphere to grab with Artificer's Intuition. Probably falls under “danger of cool things.”

Xantid Swarm/Vexing Shusher/Meddling Mage – possible sideboard material.

Force of Will/Pact of Negation/ etc – usually die to your Lion's Eye Diamonds before they are relevant for fighting counter wars. This is a major downside to the Creeping Renaissance plan.

Sideboarding theory

Public Enemy #1: Hate for our graveyard

The achilles heel of the primary combo is its softness to graveyard hate. That is the defining factor of sideboarding in most matchups. There are two directions that can be taken to solve this problem: siding in an alternate win condition or siding in hate for their graveyard hate.

a) Siding in an alternate win condition.
There are various options here:
The strongest current sideboard plan is to transform into a permanent-based control deck, bringing in Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and Jace, the Mindsculptor as win conditions/card advantage engines, and disruption in the form of [/CARDS]Force of Will[/CARDS], [/CARDS]Vendilion Clique[/CARDS], and [/CARDS]Chalice of the Void[/CARDS]. This plan completely dodges graveyard hate and poses a serious threat to both "fair" and "unfair" decks.

Another option which might be appropriate for certain metas is to sideboard into a secondary combo. Painted Stone is the most natural fit - it doesn't rely on your graveyard and is quite strong if your opponent sides out their creature removal. However, against decks with burn doubling as creature removal and reach (eg., RUG Tempo, UR Delver, Mono-Red Burn) it is not an ideal choice, as they are unlikely to side out their burn. Also, Surgical Extraction on a countered/destroyed combo piece can be quite nasty against the Painted Stone plan, as it can leave you with no win conditions.

b) Siding in hate for their graveyard hate.
Unfortunately, the breadth of graveyard hate available in Legacy is oceanic – it is basically impossible to have one answer for all of it. No single card (or even a couple cards) can answer Surgical Extraction, Extirpate, Tormod's Crpyt, Relic of Progenitus, Nihil Spellbomb, Scavenging Ooze, Wheel of Sun and Moon, Ravenous Trap, Leyline of the Void, Bojuka Bog, Faerie Macabre, and Grafdigger's Cage, just to name the most popular. The strongest anti-hate card seems to be Chalice of the Void at 1, as it stops the nightmare scenario of Surgical Extraction/Extirpate choosing Creeping Renaissance or Lion's Eye Diamond, while shutting off a few other hate cards and being decent in many matchups. However, I recommend sidestepping hate with a transformational board rather than trying to fight it head-on.

Conclusion

The first question that the deck must answer is, “Why play this over other turn-four combo decks such as Spiral Tide?” Given its strong transformational sideboard plan, stellar tutor suite, ample maindeck answers to permanent-based hate, and the card-advantage inherent in Creeping Renaissance's flashback, I believe that Creeper has the potential to be a serious contender in just about any meta.