The thing is the deck was built to take advantage of Bloodghast/Skullclamp and Zuran Orb/Crucible of Worlds/Fastbond. Everything is is in the deck to take advantage of that stratagy and to exploit the ability to replay my lands/gain infinite mana and life and draw my deck. Anything other then that and the deck becomes diluted
ya know, taking a look at it, a lot of your cards are cmc 1 or zero artifacts. have you considered a trinket mage package to get things going? I don't know if it would be worth it or not, though.
The thing is the deck was built to take advantage of Bloodghast/Skullclamp and Zuran Orb/Crucible of Worlds/Fastbond. Everything is is in the deck to take advantage of that stratagy and to exploit the ability to replay my lands/gain infinite mana and life and draw my deck. Anything other then that and the deck becomes diluted
Perhaps Horn of Greed > Bloodghast+Skullclamp, because for one Horn of Greed is only one card and the Horn can be placed under Null Rod, which is such a powerful card that I think it just belongs in any Fastbond/Land deck, especially if you want your deck to place in competitive vintage, because it shuts down Time Vault, Moxs, and so many cards that Null Rod is just invaluable.
On that note I think Hedron Crab could be invaluable for this deck. With Fastbond and Crucible of Worlds you can pop off your top three cards, then if there was a land in the top three cards you can do it again, besides that it is a good win condition because it will deck your opponent. It is a much better win condition that Piranha Marsh which is pretty much a crap card because it comes into play tapped and it is useless unless you already have a three card combo going, a three card combo which gives you infinite life. Seriously though, Vintage is not a format that deals with four card combos, especially ones that you only 1-2 of each of the pieces. I would place 4 Crucible of Worlds instead of 2 because it is so important of a card.
Here is a build that I built, it is BUG and it uses Hedron Crab as a win condition, and as an engine when you are not ready to go off. Hedron Crab is a versatile card, because you don't even need Crucible of Worlds for it to work, as long as you have Oboro, Palace in the Clouds.
Oboro, Palace in the Clouds should be considered in terms of the deck, because it can be a powerful tool, it does not combo well with Skullclamp so I got rid of Skullclamp and I built the above build, it is obviously a work in progress and I still have to find something to take out to put Null Rods in.
Changelog:
-1 Crucible of Worlds
+1 Imperial Seal
-1 Underground Sea
+1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
-1 Horn of Greed
+1 Dread Return
-1 Zuran Orb
+1 Grazing Gladehart
-1 Mox Pearl
-1 Mox Ruby
-1 Regrowth
+3 Null Rod
-1 Crucible of Worlds
+1 Tinker
I agree on Pirahna Marsh being a crap card, but I was searching for an alternative win condition that most people wouldn't really even recognize as a win condition. And this win condition is immune to most hand disruption, searchable as an instant with Crop Rotation and Recursible in at least 4 ways - Crucibles, Regrowth and Yawg Will. 43 Land in Legacy uses Barbarian Ring as one of it's win conditions. Lands are one of the most resistant of all permanent types and make difficult to remove win conditions.
Horn of Greed is an interesting alternative, because I do like the suggestion of adding Null Rod. I don't see any in your list though, are you missing them? Your version retains the Bloodghasts, but I think if we go that route, they need to be dropped as their function has disappeared. Oboro is fine te ch for the ghasts, but slow and if your cutting the ghasts and Hedrons (see next paragraph) it has little use. (Edit** I see you are asking what to cut to accomodate Null Rod - the answer here is easy - Bloodghast and then Bazaar as there is little reason to keep that besides getting a healthy graveyard**)
I don't like Hedron Crab, it's win condition is just as lousy as Pirahna Marsh, although you could win without the 3 card combo (Fastbond, Zuran Orb, Crucible), it's unlikely and I think you will just be filling people's graveyards with resources in the meantime. Most people will welcome an additional 6-12 cards in the graveyard. Furthermore it's a creature which is the most vulnerable of all permanents. Admittedly in vintage there are fewer creature kill cards but they are seeing more play due to cards like Inkwell Leviathan and Bob seeing more play. If you are going to add 4 cards that are win conditions, remember that this combo also gives you infinite mana, simply use a kill condition like Drain Life (although that is counterable). Bitter Ordeal is another possible kill card, and it's less counterable (with the exception of Stifle and the new Mindbreak Trap), when you have the combo you can easily remove your opponents entire library and since it copies itself it essentially has "this card is not counterable with FoW, Drain, Leak, Negate etc."
I see more value in cards like Tinker & Trinket Mage getting your combo into play, using your counters to protect it and your hand disruption to clear the way.
I guess that the core of the deck was built around Recursible Creatures with Skullclamp for the Draw engine and then an Infinite Mana/Life engine with the 3 card combo. These are almost 2 different elements that Counterguy was trying to fuse together. I like your Horn of Greed & Null Rod suggestion (as they are both artifacts), but it negates the draw engine of Ghast/Clamp/Bazaar. If I had my druthers (love that word - but it's a corruption), I think I might go the Horn/Null/Fastbond/Zuran Orb/Crucible route. I would use a Blue Green Skeleton, because the black - while powerful - was in to accomodate hand disruption, rituals & Ghasts. This gives me access to Counters and Land Recursion, but then it comes down to speed, I am not sure it's fast enough to compete in competitive vintage. I love Null Rod in fully powered environments, but in semi-powered environments it can be an exceedingly dead card - and most environments are going to be semi-powered.
Keep the design process going, I am not a great deckbuilder, my skill mostly lies in critique so don't take anything too personally.
Hedron crab might warrant a singleton slot as an additional slot for alt win condition, but testing will be the only way to prove that. For now I am keeping the Idea of Bloodghast and Skullclamp as my major card draw engine, and filling in some additional slots with tutors to actually find some of the cards I need, thereby negating the need to run something like Brainstorm...in theory lol
This is the newest list I am testing, and it is running alot smoother but I feel somethings missing, discussion as always.
Hedron crab might warrant a singleton slot as an additional slot for alt win condition
You said you want to "take advantage of Bloodghast/Skullclamp and Zuran Orb/Crucible of Worlds/Fastbond" one card that combines these two highly separate realities is Hedron Crab which uses the landfall part of Fastbond, and the graveyard part of Bloodghast and Crucible of Worlds. Besides that once you have it in play with Fastbond it will also be your win condition cause you can infinitely mill your opponent.
Hedron Crab is the perfect card for working with the 5 cards that you stated that this deck was about. Besides that it is only U which is nice. One of the major problems with Bloodghast + Skullclamp and why it is used in very few decks is it goes through the effort and the 1 activation cost to draw you cards, when it is easier and nicer to mill yourself, because bloodghast would rather be in the graveyard. What if you use skullclamp and you draw 2 bloodghasts? It would be much nicer to have those bloodghasts in the graveyard.
Reasons not to use Skullclamp:
1) It draws you cards rather then mill cards. In a deck that has Bloodghast I would definitely prefer the later.
2) It costs 1 everytime you want to activate it
3) It does not work with Oboro, Palace in the Clouds at all, where as Horn of Greed does.
4) It is a two card combo (Bloodghast+Skullclamp) that may cost 2BB and it is too slow to setup by vintage standards.
Your latest build is intriguing, couple comments - you only have 11 blue cards to pitch for Force of Will - maybe changing Skeletal Scrying to something like Fact or Fiction would be beneficial, that would give you card draw still, fill your graveyard rather then deplete it and give you another pitch card.
Next are the hard choices - I think you should run at least one basic land for some Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon/Wasteland resiliency. If pressed maybe a basic Forest for a Wasteland - this would allow you to at least cast Seal or Revelation after sideboarding. If you add a basic Swamp this gives you the ability to cast Darkblast after sideboarding - the suggestion might be to drop a Bayou for it, since you still only have three mainboard green cards (see suggestion below about cutting it to two).
Your landbase has dropped Bazaar which makes your Ray of Revelation in the sideboard hard to use, it also disables a lot of the utility of the Bloodghasts. An option is to include some form of Rainbow Mana for odd situations - Undiscovered Paradise which has some synergy with Bloodghast and even Hedron Crab. I would advocate the reinclusion of Bazaar. But the danger of these changes is that your gravitating towards a deck of singletons which skews your consistency. Vintge is starting to be viewed as a format that is encouraging singletons so don't be too discouraged.
I think that Time Walk should be included giving you another blue pitch source, possibly cutting down to one Crop Rotation.
I do like the power of the Hedron Crab I am just not sure it is the same deck, maybe it's an alternative deck.
I still feel like the Bloodghast/Skullclamp engine is a seperate detachable part of the deck - issues about Null Rod are absolutely true, your draw engine can be shut down by one of the most commonly played permanents in the format. Infernal Tribute while much more expensive to play and use could serve the same purpose - but in the end I think that Skullclamp is worlds better then the Tribute.
The mana base at the moment seems somewhat off kilter and I am not sure which direction it needs to go - brief analysis 15 ways to get Blue on turn 1, 17 ways to get Black on turn 1, 15 ways to get Green on turn 1. Included artifact mana but not combinations like Lotus into Trinket Mage into Emerald Mox or Crop Rotation into whatever color is needed.
For some further ideas on Bloodghast use consider:
Altar of Dementia & Blasting Station are alternative win cards once you have the combo in place, simply infinitely recur a Bloodghast out of your graveyard with Fastbond and either mill someone out or damage them out - if they replaced Hedron Crab, you would lose another blue though. And they really only function once you already have the combo. But both are artifacts so colored mana is not a consideration and they both can be tinkered directly into play.
Krovikan Horror is another win condition with the combo in place.
Bound//Determined fits your color scheme but I am not sure how useful it is.
Contamination is a interesting locking card with Bloodghasts to sacrifice, sort of a Black Blood Moon if you go this route, you probably need to go back to Rituals - this could be a whole different sort of deck though.
Diabolic Intent is an alternative useful tutor taking advantage of Bloodghast's utility.
Your latest build is intriguing, couple comments - you only have 11 blue cards to pitch for Force of Will - maybe changing Skeletal Scrying to something like Fact or Fiction would be beneficial, that would give you card draw still, fill your graveyard rather then deplete it and give you another pitch card.
Next are the hard choices - I think you should run at least one basic land for some Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon/Wasteland resiliency. If pressed maybe a basic Forest for a Wasteland - this would allow you to at least cast Seal or Revelation after sideboarding. If you add a basic Swamp this gives you the ability to cast Darkblast after sideboarding - the suggestion might be to drop a Bayou for it, since you still only have three mainboard green cards (see suggestion below about cutting it to two).
Your landbase has dropped Bazaar which makes your Ray of Revelation in the sideboard hard to use, it also disables a lot of the utility of the Bloodghasts. An option is to include some form of Rainbow Mana for odd situations - Undiscovered Paradise which has some synergy with Bloodghast and even Hedron Crab. I would advocate the reinclusion of Bazaar. But the danger of these changes is that your gravitating towards a deck of singletons which skews your consistency. Vintge is starting to be viewed as a format that is encouraging singletons so don't be too discouraged.
I think that Time Walk should be included giving you another blue pitch source, possibly cutting down to one Crop Rotation.
I do like the power of the Hedron Crab I am just not sure it is the same deck, maybe it's an alternative deck.
I still feel like the Bloodghast/Skullclamp engine is a seperate detachable part of the deck - issues about Null Rod are absolutely true, your draw engine can be shut down by one of the most commonly played permanents in the format. Infernal Tribute while much more expensive to play and use could serve the same purpose - but in the end I think that Skullclamp is worlds better then the Tribute.
The mana base at the moment seems somewhat off kilter and I am not sure which direction it needs to go - brief analysis 15 ways to get Blue on turn 1, 17 ways to get Black on turn 1, 15 ways to get Green on turn 1. Included artifact mana but not combinations like Lotus into Trinket Mage into Emerald Mox or Crop Rotation into whatever color is needed.
For some further ideas on Bloodghast use consider:
Altar of Dementia & Blasting Station are alternative win cards once you have the combo in place, simply infinitely recur a Bloodghast out of your graveyard with Fastbond and either mill someone out or damage them out - if they replaced Hedron Crab, you would lose another blue though. And they really only function once you already have the combo. But both are artifacts so colored mana is not a consideration and they both can be tinkered directly into play.
Krovikan Horror is another win condition with the combo in place.
Bound//Determined fits your color scheme but I am not sure how useful it is.
Contamination is a interesting locking card with Bloodghasts to sacrifice, sort of a Black Blood Moon if you go this route, you probably need to go back to Rituals - this could be a whole different sort of deck though.
Diabolic Intent is an alternative useful tutor taking advantage of Bloodghast's utility.
Just throwing around a bunch of ideas as always.
After kinda getting away from the main theme here, lets try to get back on track
Goal 1: Use Skullclamp as a draw engine with Bloodghast
Goal 2: Maintain control of the board while drawing for kill condition
Goal 3: Have a solid, and hard to cope with Kill condition
The clamp engine works really well, but I agree its a little slow for the format. I don't like the crab at all to be honest, but It might have its place in a Crucible.dec
what about running dropping the crab and bloodghast ideas all together and just straight up parana marsh kill?
makes path and stp look really stupid.
I was thinking about building Landcombo.dec but I worry about its kill condition lol I mean its a full 3 card combo at that point, tho you can sub in something like Squandered Resources for a sac outlet and use the mana to power your spells too..
what about running dropping the crab and bloodghast ideas all together
I agree that they should be dropped. It is not very advantageous for decks to mix graveyard recursion with some other archetype, because after the opponent has a chance to SB in cards they can put in Leyline of the Void or something which shuts down Bloodghast and Crucible of Worlds.
This is why 5c Stax has some problems after the first game. The opponent can put their graveyard hate in the second game, as such I tend to think that if you are going to have graveyard cards in your deck, your deck should be Ichorid or something which can really focus on protecting its graveyard from hate. Ichorid is probably the only deck which can truly put Bloodghast to use in competitive play. Bloodghast takes up way too much space on 5c Stax lists, and it is too slow and weak with Skullclamp, so perhaps it can have a place in Ichorid decks or Tarmogoyf decks, which are already packing graveyard-protection.
Quote from LastManStanding »
straight up parana marsh kill?
It is too weak for vintage because it is a four card combo, and the whole come into play tapped thing is a big disadvantage. I like Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai because it comes into play untapped, so it can actually be used as a land, instead of as a dead card.
Quote from LastManStanding »
makes path and stp look really stupid.
Path and STP are not really going to do much anyways because they are wasted cards on Bloodghast. Besides that usually the crab is not in play for more then 1-2 turns so what good is STP going to do? In addition to that even if there is no creatures MD they will just move out their STP for something in their SB like Pithing Needle which destroys the Zuran Orb part of this combo, that is if they don't already MD Null Rod.
Quote from TheCounterGuy »
I was thinking about building Landcombo.dec but I worry about its kill condition lol I mean its a full 3 card combo at that point, tho you can sub in something like Squandered Resources for a sac outlet and use the mana to power your spells too..
The entirety of the problem is getting to Fastbond, which is not easy to do. That is what makes this combo goldfish on like turn 5 or 6, because it is hard to get to Fastbond which there is only one of. Besides that Crucible of World costs 3 which makes this even worse, and the prospect of drawing two Crucibles in one hand is not very pleasant.
I agree with jhuni on the fact that the Crab & the Ghast don't really fit in this deck, I stated it earlier when I suggested going to a U/G skeleton.
I also agree that the whole idea is difficult, 3 card combos are going to have problems especially when they do nothing but get you infinite mana and infinite life. Animate Dead & Worldgorger Dragon give you infinite mana, if you want to add a third component (something like Jwar Isle Refuge - another semi useless land) you can get infinite life; Power Artifact and Basalt Monolith get you infinite mana (although it is colorless); and Voltaic Key and Time Vault just win you the game.
Fastbond's power is really demonstrated by this deck, but the truth is, it is hard to get it, Zuran Orb and Crucible in play - especially since it's green - essentially the least played color in vintage. Furthermore it is an enchantment which means that the non-black tutors are in white another color not played much in vintage. The latest set - Zendikar - is probably going to guarantee that Fastbond never come off the restricted list - Hedron Crab alone is incredibly abusable with it. Who knows what the future of landfall will bring.
I stated it earlier when I suggested going to a UG skeleton.
How exactly do you plan on getting Fastbond without the three (1, 2, 3) best tutors in the game? There is no good tutors within UG for getting Fastbond (you said it yourself). Blue can tutor for instants, sorceries, and artifacts, and green can tutor for lands and creatures, however, there is no good way for them to tutor for Enchantments such as Fastbond. Do you have a UG deck list?
That list doesn't have Hedron Crab or Bloodghast in it, and it is pretty good. It can goldfish on turn 3 or 4. What makes the Crucible work so well here is the fetchlands. With Fastbond it means you get 7 or so lands, and without it, it just means you get a consistent land source each turn. Fabricate is a nice way to get Zuran Orb and Crucible of Worlds, but for the most part it is a way to get Time Vault. Time Vault is the primary win condition in this build, it was originally supposed to be Crucible/Orb but I ended up just Fabricating for Time Vault almost every time because it is so much better =/
I think the main problem is that its hard to justify running any combo other then key+vault. Its a two card win for 4 mana.
Then only other combos that will thrive are ones without artifacts so they can dodge the hate.....but good luck finding a good combo without artifacts....
I like your deck quite a bit. I guess I view the UG skeleton idea differently, but maybe I mistated it - in vintage I have no problem with splash and Yawg win, DT, VT & Seal are all valid splashes. In reality Blue is the or needs to be the dominant color to support FoW, and the Green is the splash even though it contains the only colored element of the combo. Fastbond is the only green card in the maindeck.
The initial build had quite a bit more Black to enable Hymn, actually casting Bloodghast and activating the Nether. These black elements are gone the way of the Dodo (is there a magic equivalent to the dodo?). When I think of Black as part of the backbone a the deck - I would assume it includes Black's strengths - Tutors, Discard and possibly card draw via Bob.
All that aside I really like your deck, I would be comfortable running it almost card for card - the only thing it lacks is a draw engine and my opinion there is the same as your's I am guessing, we could remove our 3 card combo to rely only on our 2 card combo, add Tezz and draw elements and essentially be running a Tez deck. Of course if you want to stay true to the original engine, then you could consider Horn of Greed again - your suggestion - but there is not much fat to cut in the existing deck.
I would cut 2 Fabers, and add a Mystical Tutor {was floored to see you missed that MUST play card} and Inkwell Leviathan for another win condition against pesky decks like fish/aggro ect.
S.M.
Inkwell Leviathan sounds like a nice SB card though, because after they SB out all their creature hate I can side it in.
Quote from Beralt »
Of course if you want to stay true to the original engine, then you could consider Horn of Greed again - your suggestion - but there is not much fat to cut in the existing deck.
My original intent was to have 3 of them in there, but it turns out Horn of Greed helps the opponent
Horn of Greed just doesn't work that well. I would much rather add Yawgmoth's Bargain, although it costs 4BB players that manage to resolve it almost always win on the same turn.
Quote from LastManStanding »
Then only other combos that will thrive are ones without artifacts so they can dodge the hate.....but good luck finding a good combo without artifacts....
Valid statement on the Inky. I don't main it in my bob'storm deck either, but I guess my opp on ave has a rough time beating me games 1 {but the deck I'm running is a pure TIER powerhouse also, and not being a rogue deck might play a factor as well....double tendrils}. This deck might need that added comfort of a ALT kill......I guess testing is in order, but you might have your mind already set.
I like the idea of this deck;
S.M.
Oh to note if inky is in your hand just pitch him to a force! This action allows him to not be a dead card, and yet another solid reason we VP's run him in the first place outside of shroud.
I really like the way this deck is starting to come together. However, a few things to note here is the fact that Tournament decks will be playing plenty of graveyard hate. In fact, some deck's SB is devoted to transforming their entire deck into full blown graveyard hate. Which is why I believe that Bloodghast is a bad idea to have in the deck.
Also, Zuran Orb loses to Null Rod and with half of the decks out there playing that card, I think this deck would be wise to be cautious in playing that card. For a version that I would like to work on, I have considered running Grazing Gladehart instead. It's also a 2/2 beater as well as a way to net life off of playing lands.
The thing this deck needs the most, which has already been mentioned before, is a good draw engine. I never liked the whole Skullclamp idea as it is a 1 mana investment. I kinda like the idea of having either Yawgmoth's Bargain or Necropotence, but they are rather expensive to play.
If an effective draw engine is put together, this deck will work. Otherwise, this deck may just be reaching it's unfortunate dead end. Anyways, hope to hear more on this deck and seeing it work.
Also, Zuran Orb loses to Null Rod and with half of the decks out there playing that card, I think this deck would be wise to be cautious in playing that card. For a version that I would like to work on, I have considered running Grazing Gladehart instead. It's also a 2/2 beater as well as a way to net life off of playing lands.
Oh to note if inky is in your hand just pitch him to a force! This action allows him to not be a dead card, and yet another solid reason we VP's run him in the first place outside of shroud.
Indeed that is one thing that is nice about him. I personally prefer Inkwell Leviathan to all of the other artifact creatures because in addition to shroud it has Islandwalk which can be advantageous sometimes. The fact that it goes into the graveyard unlike Darksteel Colossus means you can use Goblin Welder to put it into play, which makes him one of Goblin Welder's best friends.
Has anyone thought about adding white fro Enlightened Tutor? It tutors for every piece of the combo and is not restricted in vintage. It can also be cast easily off a fetched Savannah through Misty Rainforest.
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Credit to DolZero for this awesome sig!
Perhaps Horn of Greed > Bloodghast+Skullclamp, because for one Horn of Greed is only one card and the Horn can be placed under Null Rod, which is such a powerful card that I think it just belongs in any Fastbond/Land deck, especially if you want your deck to place in competitive vintage, because it shuts down Time Vault, Moxs, and so many cards that Null Rod is just invaluable.
On that note I think Hedron Crab could be invaluable for this deck. With Fastbond and Crucible of Worlds you can pop off your top three cards, then if there was a land in the top three cards you can do it again, besides that it is a good win condition because it will deck your opponent. It is a much better win condition that Piranha Marsh which is pretty much a crap card because it comes into play tapped and it is useless unless you already have a three card combo going, a three card combo which gives you infinite life. Seriously though, Vintage is not a format that deals with four card combos, especially ones that you only 1-2 of each of the pieces. I would place 4 Crucible of Worlds instead of 2 because it is so important of a card.
Here is a build that I built, it is BUG and it uses Hedron Crab as a win condition, and as an engine when you are not ready to go off. Hedron Crab is a versatile card, because you don't even need Crucible of Worlds for it to work, as long as you have Oboro, Palace in the Clouds.
4 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
4 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Island
1 Strip Mine
Creatures (9):
4 Hedron Crab
4 Bloodghast
1 Grazing Gladehart
1 Fastbond
Artifacts (10):
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
3 Null Rod
2 Crucible of Worlds
Sorceries (7):
1 Time Walk
1 Ponder
1 Tinker
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Dread Return
4 Mana Drain
4 Force Of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Vampiric Tutor
Oboro, Palace in the Clouds should be considered in terms of the deck, because it can be a powerful tool, it does not combo well with Skullclamp so I got rid of Skullclamp and I built the above build, it is obviously a work in progress and I still have to find something to take out to put Null Rods in.
Changelog:
+1 Imperial Seal
-1 Underground Sea
+1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
-1 Horn of Greed
+1 Dread Return
-1 Zuran Orb
+1 Grazing Gladehart
-1 Mox Pearl
-1 Mox Ruby
-1 Regrowth
+3 Null Rod
-1 Crucible of Worlds
+1 Tinker
I agree on Pirahna Marsh being a crap card, but I was searching for an alternative win condition that most people wouldn't really even recognize as a win condition. And this win condition is immune to most hand disruption, searchable as an instant with Crop Rotation and Recursible in at least 4 ways - Crucibles, Regrowth and Yawg Will. 43 Land in Legacy uses Barbarian Ring as one of it's win conditions. Lands are one of the most resistant of all permanent types and make difficult to remove win conditions.
Horn of Greed is an interesting alternative, because I do like the suggestion of adding Null Rod. I don't see any in your list though, are you missing them? Your version retains the Bloodghasts, but I think if we go that route, they need to be dropped as their function has disappeared. Oboro is fine te ch for the ghasts, but slow and if your cutting the ghasts and Hedrons (see next paragraph) it has little use. (Edit** I see you are asking what to cut to accomodate Null Rod - the answer here is easy - Bloodghast and then Bazaar as there is little reason to keep that besides getting a healthy graveyard**)
I don't like Hedron Crab, it's win condition is just as lousy as Pirahna Marsh, although you could win without the 3 card combo (Fastbond, Zuran Orb, Crucible), it's unlikely and I think you will just be filling people's graveyards with resources in the meantime. Most people will welcome an additional 6-12 cards in the graveyard. Furthermore it's a creature which is the most vulnerable of all permanents. Admittedly in vintage there are fewer creature kill cards but they are seeing more play due to cards like Inkwell Leviathan and Bob seeing more play. If you are going to add 4 cards that are win conditions, remember that this combo also gives you infinite mana, simply use a kill condition like Drain Life (although that is counterable). Bitter Ordeal is another possible kill card, and it's less counterable (with the exception of Stifle and the new Mindbreak Trap), when you have the combo you can easily remove your opponents entire library and since it copies itself it essentially has "this card is not counterable with FoW, Drain, Leak, Negate etc."
I see more value in cards like Tinker & Trinket Mage getting your combo into play, using your counters to protect it and your hand disruption to clear the way.
I guess that the core of the deck was built around Recursible Creatures with Skullclamp for the Draw engine and then an Infinite Mana/Life engine with the 3 card combo. These are almost 2 different elements that Counterguy was trying to fuse together. I like your Horn of Greed & Null Rod suggestion (as they are both artifacts), but it negates the draw engine of Ghast/Clamp/Bazaar. If I had my druthers (love that word - but it's a corruption), I think I might go the Horn/Null/Fastbond/Zuran Orb/Crucible route. I would use a Blue Green Skeleton, because the black - while powerful - was in to accomodate hand disruption, rituals & Ghasts. This gives me access to Counters and Land Recursion, but then it comes down to speed, I am not sure it's fast enough to compete in competitive vintage. I love Null Rod in fully powered environments, but in semi-powered environments it can be an exceedingly dead card - and most environments are going to be semi-powered.
Keep the design process going, I am not a great deckbuilder, my skill mostly lies in critique so don't take anything too personally.
Indeed. I will be filling up my own graveyard with lands that I can reuse with Crucible and with Bloodghasts and other resources.
Especially if you have Bloodghasts in your deck =/
Here are some scenarios in which justify the Hedron Crab:
1) Fastbond + Hedron Crab + Oboro, Palace of Clouds, only costs (GU) and it decks your opponent before they can use their cards.
2) Fastbond + Hedron Crab + Crucible of Worlds, only costs (3GU) you can deck yourself, finding more lands further decking yourself until you find the right cards in your graveyard.
This is the newest list I am testing, and it is running alot smoother but I feel somethings missing, discussion as always.
2x Trinket Mage
1x Hedron Crab
1x Skullclamp
2x Crucible of Worlds
2x Zuran Orb
1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Emerald
1x Fastbond
1x Regrowth
2x Crop Rotation
4x Force of Will
1x Brainstorm
1x Gifts Ungiven
1x Tinker
1x Ancestral Recall
4x Thoughseize
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Yawgmoths Will
1x Skeletal Scrying
3x Misty Rainforest
4x Bayou
4x Underground Sea
2x Tropical Island
1x Glacial Chasm
1x Piranha Marsh
1x Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1x Strip Mine
3x Wasteland
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Seal of Primorduim
1x Ray of Revelation
2x Pithing Needle
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Darkblast
2x Mindbreak Trap
2x Tormod's Crypt
1x Extripate
2x Ravenous Trap
2x Null Rod
You said you want to "take advantage of Bloodghast/Skullclamp and Zuran Orb/Crucible of Worlds/Fastbond" one card that combines these two highly separate realities is Hedron Crab which uses the landfall part of Fastbond, and the graveyard part of Bloodghast and Crucible of Worlds. Besides that once you have it in play with Fastbond it will also be your win condition cause you can infinitely mill your opponent.
Hedron Crab is the perfect card for working with the 5 cards that you stated that this deck was about. Besides that it is only U which is nice. One of the major problems with Bloodghast + Skullclamp and why it is used in very few decks is it goes through the effort and the 1 activation cost to draw you cards, when it is easier and nicer to mill yourself, because bloodghast would rather be in the graveyard. What if you use skullclamp and you draw 2 bloodghasts? It would be much nicer to have those bloodghasts in the graveyard.
I have decided to not even use Horn of Greed either, so that I can instead focus on Hedron Crab which mills, however, if I created a build w/o Bloodghast and Hedron Crab I would use Horn of Greed.
Reasons not to use Skullclamp:
1) It draws you cards rather then mill cards. In a deck that has Bloodghast I would definitely prefer the later.
2) It costs 1 everytime you want to activate it
3) It does not work with Oboro, Palace in the Clouds at all, where as Horn of Greed does.
4) It is a two card combo (Bloodghast+Skullclamp) that may cost 2BB and it is too slow to setup by vintage standards.
Edit:
I was just playtesting and the second game in I got a super-lucky hand of
Oboro, Palace in the Clouds, Tropical Island, Mox Sapphire, Fastbond, Hedron Crab, Brainstorm, Mana Drain
Which is a first turn win:
Mox Saphire/Hedron Crab + Tropical Island/Fastbond -> Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
Your latest build is intriguing, couple comments - you only have 11 blue cards to pitch for Force of Will - maybe changing Skeletal Scrying to something like Fact or Fiction would be beneficial, that would give you card draw still, fill your graveyard rather then deplete it and give you another pitch card.
Next are the hard choices - I think you should run at least one basic land for some Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon/Wasteland resiliency. If pressed maybe a basic Forest for a Wasteland - this would allow you to at least cast Seal or Revelation after sideboarding. If you add a basic Swamp this gives you the ability to cast Darkblast after sideboarding - the suggestion might be to drop a Bayou for it, since you still only have three mainboard green cards (see suggestion below about cutting it to two).
Your landbase has dropped Bazaar which makes your Ray of Revelation in the sideboard hard to use, it also disables a lot of the utility of the Bloodghasts. An option is to include some form of Rainbow Mana for odd situations - Undiscovered Paradise which has some synergy with Bloodghast and even Hedron Crab. I would advocate the reinclusion of Bazaar. But the danger of these changes is that your gravitating towards a deck of singletons which skews your consistency. Vintge is starting to be viewed as a format that is encouraging singletons so don't be too discouraged.
I think that Time Walk should be included giving you another blue pitch source, possibly cutting down to one Crop Rotation.
I do like the power of the Hedron Crab I am just not sure it is the same deck, maybe it's an alternative deck.
I still feel like the Bloodghast/Skullclamp engine is a seperate detachable part of the deck - issues about Null Rod are absolutely true, your draw engine can be shut down by one of the most commonly played permanents in the format. Infernal Tribute while much more expensive to play and use could serve the same purpose - but in the end I think that Skullclamp is worlds better then the Tribute.
The mana base at the moment seems somewhat off kilter and I am not sure which direction it needs to go - brief analysis 15 ways to get Blue on turn 1, 17 ways to get Black on turn 1, 15 ways to get Green on turn 1. Included artifact mana but not combinations like Lotus into Trinket Mage into Emerald Mox or Crop Rotation into whatever color is needed.
For some further ideas on Bloodghast use consider:
Altar of Dementia & Blasting Station are alternative win cards once you have the combo in place, simply infinitely recur a Bloodghast out of your graveyard with Fastbond and either mill someone out or damage them out - if they replaced Hedron Crab, you would lose another blue though. And they really only function once you already have the combo. But both are artifacts so colored mana is not a consideration and they both can be tinkered directly into play.
Krovikan Horror is another win condition with the combo in place.
Bound//Determined fits your color scheme but I am not sure how useful it is.
Contamination is a interesting locking card with Bloodghasts to sacrifice, sort of a Black Blood Moon if you go this route, you probably need to go back to Rituals - this could be a whole different sort of deck though.
Diabolic Intent is an alternative useful tutor taking advantage of Bloodghast's utility.
Just throwing around a bunch of ideas as always.
After kinda getting away from the main theme here, lets try to get back on track
Goal 1: Use Skullclamp as a draw engine with Bloodghast
Goal 2: Maintain control of the board while drawing for kill condition
Goal 3: Have a solid, and hard to cope with Kill condition
Decklist skeleton #1
1x Skullclamp
2x Crucible of Worlds
2x Zuran Orb
1x Piranha Marsh
Ok this is the basic structure to build around, an obvious BG..now lets add some search/draw/tutor and Mana excel
2x Trinket Mage
1x Skullclamp
2x Crucible of Worlds
1x Zuran Orb
1x Altar of Dementia
1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Fastbond
1x Seal of Primordium
1x Time Walk
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Brainstorm
1x Tinker
1x Ponder
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Gift's Ungiven
4x Thoughtseize
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Yawgmoth's Will
1x Crop Rotation
1x Regrowth
3x Bazaar of Baghdad
3x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine
1x Academy Ruins
1x Glacial Chasm
4x Verdant catacombs
4x Bayou
1x Swamp
4x Underground Sea
Current version in testing, we shall see how this works
Thanks Darth Monkey
makes path and stp look really stupid.
Thanks Darth Monkey
I was thinking about building Landcombo.dec but I worry about its kill condition lol I mean its a full 3 card combo at that point, tho you can sub in something like Squandered Resources for a sac outlet and use the mana to power your spells too..
I agree that they should be dropped. It is not very advantageous for decks to mix graveyard recursion with some other archetype, because after the opponent has a chance to SB in cards they can put in Leyline of the Void or something which shuts down Bloodghast and Crucible of Worlds.
This is why 5c Stax has some problems after the first game. The opponent can put their graveyard hate in the second game, as such I tend to think that if you are going to have graveyard cards in your deck, your deck should be Ichorid or something which can really focus on protecting its graveyard from hate. Ichorid is probably the only deck which can truly put Bloodghast to use in competitive play. Bloodghast takes up way too much space on 5c Stax lists, and it is too slow and weak with Skullclamp, so perhaps it can have a place in Ichorid decks or Tarmogoyf decks, which are already packing graveyard-protection.
It is too weak for vintage because it is a four card combo, and the whole come into play tapped thing is a big disadvantage. I like Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai because it comes into play untapped, so it can actually be used as a land, instead of as a dead card.
Path and STP are not really going to do much anyways because they are wasted cards on Bloodghast. Besides that usually the crab is not in play for more then 1-2 turns so what good is STP going to do? In addition to that even if there is no creatures MD they will just move out their STP for something in their SB like Pithing Needle which destroys the Zuran Orb part of this combo, that is if they don't already MD Null Rod.
The entirety of the problem is getting to Fastbond, which is not easy to do. That is what makes this combo goldfish on like turn 5 or 6, because it is hard to get to Fastbond which there is only one of. Besides that Crucible of World costs 3 which makes this even worse, and the prospect of drawing two Crucibles in one hand is not very pleasant.
The sac outlet is never a problem, becuase you can use Trinket Mage to fetch Zuran Orb, besides that Overgrown Estate is a card that serves the exact same function as Zuran Orb.
I also agree that the whole idea is difficult, 3 card combos are going to have problems especially when they do nothing but get you infinite mana and infinite life. Animate Dead & Worldgorger Dragon give you infinite mana, if you want to add a third component (something like Jwar Isle Refuge - another semi useless land) you can get infinite life; Power Artifact and Basalt Monolith get you infinite mana (although it is colorless); and Voltaic Key and Time Vault just win you the game.
Fastbond's power is really demonstrated by this deck, but the truth is, it is hard to get it, Zuran Orb and Crucible in play - especially since it's green - essentially the least played color in vintage. Furthermore it is an enchantment which means that the non-black tutors are in white another color not played much in vintage. The latest set - Zendikar - is probably going to guarantee that Fastbond never come off the restricted list - Hedron Crab alone is incredibly abusable with it. Who knows what the future of landfall will bring.
How exactly do you plan on getting Fastbond without the three (1, 2, 3) best tutors in the game? There is no good tutors within UG for getting Fastbond (you said it yourself). Blue can tutor for instants, sorceries, and artifacts, and green can tutor for lands and creatures, however, there is no good way for them to tutor for Enchantments such as Fastbond. Do you have a UG deck list?
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai
Enchantments (1):
1 Fastbond
Artifacts (16):
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Time Vault
2 Voltaic Key
1 Memory Jar
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Zuran Orb
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
Sorceries (12):
3 Fabricate
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Tinker
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Ponder
1 Regrowth
1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
That list doesn't have Hedron Crab or Bloodghast in it, and it is pretty good. It can goldfish on turn 3 or 4. What makes the Crucible work so well here is the fetchlands. With Fastbond it means you get 7 or so lands, and without it, it just means you get a consistent land source each turn. Fabricate is a nice way to get Zuran Orb and Crucible of Worlds, but for the most part it is a way to get Time Vault. Time Vault is the primary win condition in this build, it was originally supposed to be Crucible/Orb but I ended up just Fabricating for Time Vault almost every time because it is so much better =/
Then only other combos that will thrive are ones without artifacts so they can dodge the hate.....but good luck finding a good combo without artifacts....
Thanks Darth Monkey
I like your deck quite a bit. I guess I view the UG skeleton idea differently, but maybe I mistated it - in vintage I have no problem with splash and Yawg win, DT, VT & Seal are all valid splashes. In reality Blue is the or needs to be the dominant color to support FoW, and the Green is the splash even though it contains the only colored element of the combo. Fastbond is the only green card in the maindeck.
The initial build had quite a bit more Black to enable Hymn, actually casting Bloodghast and activating the Nether. These black elements are gone the way of the Dodo (is there a magic equivalent to the dodo?). When I think of Black as part of the backbone a the deck - I would assume it includes Black's strengths - Tutors, Discard and possibly card draw via Bob.
All that aside I really like your deck, I would be comfortable running it almost card for card - the only thing it lacks is a draw engine and my opinion there is the same as your's I am guessing, we could remove our 3 card combo to rely only on our 2 card combo, add Tezz and draw elements and essentially be running a Tez deck. Of course if you want to stay true to the original engine, then you could consider Horn of Greed again - your suggestion - but there is not much fat to cut in the existing deck.
S.M.
I probably didn't add it because I was looking for tutors for the Fastbond part of the deck. I changed it now.
What fish deck doesn't already adapted to the popularity of Inkwell Leviathan ? Decks that have B tend to have Diabolic Edict, and those decks that have U tend to have 2 Hurkyl's Recall/Rebuild in which case it sucks to have a creature that costs 7UU in my hand, unless I have Elvish Piper or Master Transmuter in play.
Inkwell Leviathan sounds like a nice SB card though, because after they SB out all their creature hate I can side it in.
My original intent was to have 3 of them in there, but it turns out Horn of Greed helps the opponent
Horn of Greed just doesn't work that well. I would much rather add Yawgmoth's Bargain, although it costs 4BB players that manage to resolve it almost always win on the same turn.
Hedron Crab is not an artifact =/
I like the idea of this deck;
S.M.
Oh to note if inky is in your hand just pitch him to a force! This action allows him to not be a dead card, and yet another solid reason we VP's run him in the first place outside of shroud.
Also, Zuran Orb loses to Null Rod and with half of the decks out there playing that card, I think this deck would be wise to be cautious in playing that card. For a version that I would like to work on, I have considered running Grazing Gladehart instead. It's also a 2/2 beater as well as a way to net life off of playing lands.
The thing this deck needs the most, which has already been mentioned before, is a good draw engine. I never liked the whole Skullclamp idea as it is a 1 mana investment. I kinda like the idea of having either Yawgmoth's Bargain or Necropotence, but they are rather expensive to play.
If an effective draw engine is put together, this deck will work. Otherwise, this deck may just be reaching it's unfortunate dead end. Anyways, hope to hear more on this deck and seeing it work.
Look back two pages to see a deck I already built with Grazing Gladehart, Hedron Crab, and Null Rod. Grazing Gladehart costs 2G which is less then ideal for hardcasting it when you could hardcast a very powerful spell like Yawgmoth's Will, Necropotence, or Tinker instead. On the other hand if you can play Hedron Crab for U instead which is much less mana then you can drop your library into your graveyard and use Bloodghast + Dread Return to get Glazing Gladehart into play, but this whole group of cards can be hated away pretty easily with stuff like Leyline of the Void.
Indeed that is one thing that is nice about him. I personally prefer Inkwell Leviathan to all of the other artifact creatures because in addition to shroud it has Islandwalk which can be advantageous sometimes. The fact that it goes into the graveyard unlike Darksteel Colossus means you can use Goblin Welder to put it into play, which makes him one of Goblin Welder's best friends.