So this is where I am at the moment with the deck myself. I think I like sb snapcaster though, often because Colfenor's Plans and snapcaster don't interact well in testing, and Id prefer a creature that is more intimidating on offense. Fitting cryptic would be nice aswell but Im not sure its entirely necessary. I might however even play Kolaghan's Command if I found a threat worth pressing the assault with.
To be honest I don't think you want plans over snapcaster. Snapcaster is pretty much the best card in the deck (because you don't run cryptic ;)). I'm not sure why you want more offense in a deck that doesn't attack at all. Kolaghan's Command is great even with just 4 snapcaster because you can always get a 2-for-1 with it and get even more value by returning a snapcaster. I'm running a single Tasigur because it also synergizes well with snapcaster and unless it gets pathed, I can get it back with Kommand.
I'm also having a hard time with your 4 manlands. The main way you lose is by not being able to interact enough to prevent yourself from getting overrun by all the linear decks in the format. Forced taplands are horrible in this crucial part of the game and for me a reason to move to the Scars Fastlands over some of the M10 duals.
As I mentioned in the other topic, since my 3-0 FNM win things went much less smoothly. In fact, I haven't won a match in 10 matches (0-7-3) due to various reasons. Lots of topdecks-for-the-win on my opponent's side (literally would have won if they didn't) but also issues with taking too much damage from my mana base or offering-flooding (in the list posted earlier), not being able to find an offering (when I went down to 3 offerings) or lacking an answer to their last threat before being able to win.
Unfortunately, Plans hasn't been good for me so far. When I still played 2 I rarely wanted to cast it due to the pressure being applied to me + I often boarded it out. Later, as a 1-off in my current list I rarely cast it and when I did, it's too low impact or too late to lock them out. The thing that really kills it is the 1 spell a turn clause. That makes it a nombo with snapcaster mage and also makes it a useless topdeck when you have to put the 3rd trigger of a pact on the stack. I'm considering going to either 4 pacts, 3 offering and a dark petition or 3 pact, 3 offering, a dark petition and a 4th cryptic/dismember/something else. Dark petition seems like an interesting card in this deck in that it is controlling enough to be able to cast petition before dying (and having spell mastery). On T6/7 it's possible to petition into an offering and cast it right away, which is basically what you need. The big question is how to make sure that the BBB from spell mastery isn't wasted when you don't go for offering. Damnation and pact curve nicely into it, but I don't want to play damnation main (the curve is high as it is already). Dismember offers the flexibility of casting it T1 as well as T5 after petitioning for it, so that's nice. I also moved Anger to the sideboard.
Lastly, the one thing I did like a lot are changes to the mana base I made and the 3 Inquisition of Kozilek that I added instead of a spell snare, offering and the 2nd plans. I swapped out a watery grave for a Sunken Hollow and a sulfur falls and drowned catacomb for blackcleave cliffs and darkslick shores. Fast pain-free mana is important and it's quite easy to have 2 basics out to make sunken hollow an underground sea, which is awesome. Leading on dual, then basic basic sunken hollow is the perfect mana base that also plays around blood moon fairly well. As well as can be expected in this deck at least because blood moon is always going to be very hard to beat in this deck. Because of that, I just swapped out my 3rd island for Desolate Lighthouse because the filtering and option to discard useless offerings is just necessary and instead of cryptic I can also use explosives to get rid of the moon. There are a few matchups in which Engineered Explosives is great and it's also a neat answer to both blood moon and choke, so I'll be upping the count to 2 in the side board.
i was thumbing through cards and found copy enchantment.
with all of this blue being included in the lists, maybe it has a place in the deck?
doubling up on demonic pact's effects each upkeep could be useful while also being twice as dangerous.
Well, the issue with a 'combo' deck such as this is having dead cards and dying before you can execute your game plan. Harmless Offering literally does nothing (well, worse than nothing) when you have nothing bad to offer so it's the worst draw in your deck when you need to survive or find a plans/pact in the first place. The question to ask is: how does card X help with surviving until you can offer something to win the game or with finding a combo piece? Copy enchantment only copies something that is already on the battlefield so clearly, you're not looking for something to offer: you already have it. It would help in finding offering by copying a plans or pact (if you have the time to wait for a trigger with pact) but beyond that it does nothing at all. When you get beat down by Goblin Guide or combo'd by Ad Nauseam, a card that does literally nothing before turn 5 in the best case scenario is not what you're looking for.
The reason to add blue to this deck is that it offers card selection and draw, cheap general interaction and the best get-out-of-jail-free card that does everything you want in Cryptic Command plus the ability to recur everything in Snapcaster Mage. I don't think you can afford to not play blue when you have to prepare for a long game considering that you can't win before turn 7, contrary to fx Grishoalbrand.
My deck doesn't really fit in with the decks that have been posted in this topic before, but as it's a fairly unique take on the deck I didn't want to post in the grixis control thread. The moment Harmless Offering was spoiled I was looking for a way to make this a deck in modern and I initially thought of Demonic Pact and Immortal Coil and after searching a bit, Colfenor's Plans. The idea is basically to be a 'twin' deck, as in, dedicate ~10 cards to a game-winning combo and be a control deck around that which has applications for those cards outside of the combo. After some initial testing/gold fishing it quickly turned out that Immortal Coil is not good enough without self mill like Thought Scour and Faithless Looting so it quickly went down from 4 to 1 in the main deck. I also didn't particularly like how it required me to have my own graveyard hate in order to actually be able to kill them after offering it. It's also an artifact which is handy when you need to get rid of it, but it also makes it way easier to get rid of by your opponents.
Yesterday I played in an FNM and went 3-0 with the following list:
I played against BTL Scapeshift with prismatic Omen, Grixis Delver and Skred Red and in principle the main plan worked out fine. I won all but 1 game by offering a pact or plans after gaining control also with the help of those pacts/plans. I was pretty impressed with pact and how it fit in the deck. It's great to be able to draw extra cards, obviously, but the Warleader's Helix combines nicely with other burn to kill something you'd otherwise need Terminate for and making them discard 2 the turn you plan on offering it to them also helps a lot in fighting counterspells or other answers. If you ever catch them with <3 cards in hand, they lose their sandbagged counterspell or answer. In the worst case scenario, they have to kill your pact right there before you even play the offering which makes sure you don't die to it. I never lost the game by locking myself out.
The plans also impressed me because they are indeed just a draw 7 in a combo-control deck, which is as awesome as it sounds. The fact that offering makes it a win con as well makes it pretty good. It's not insane, because the 1 spell per turn limit is still pretty harsh, but with sufficient instants in the deck, it's not hard to play 2 spells a cycle + a land to drain the plans in 2 turns and then bounce/offer it. Against the prismatic omen deck I boarded them out for obvious reasons, but other than that I kept in at least 1 because it digs so well against decks that can't remove it or punish you for it.
That brings me to the reason why I think this is actually a deck and not just a joke: 4 mana enchantments are not easily dealt with in Modern and a 3 mana sorcery is uncounterable by at least 2 popular counterspells (Spell Snare and Dispel) while being cheap enough to recast via Snapcaster Mage and Goblin Dark-Dwellers or through a Remand. This makes it much more robust than Twin was against the BGx decks. Having so few creatures also makes removal fairly terrible against you and otherwise the Kommands rebuy them.
The only thing I plan on changing in my current list is cutting the last Immortal Coil. It's just too slow and underwhelming not to mention risky in this deck that I'd rather have a 4th pact or, more likely, more interaction or a 3rd cryptic. Having to find at least 1 out of just 6 answers to your own pact/plans is maybe mathematically too unlikely in the draw 7 of plans, for example. Cryptic is also just an awesome card so it's tempting to just jam 4, but I don't think the curve can take it. I didn't really feel like I needed more than 3 pacts because it's not a combo deck in the sense that it has to assemble its combo asap and because it doesn't impact the board the turn you play it, you really don't want to be pact flooded.
I used to have a Desolate Lighthouse in the list but I'm afraid the manabase can't handle it at 23 lands. It does work well with plans to not lock yourself out so it's definitely interesting. The Immortal Coil may well become a loothouse as well.
Anyway, the deck was a blast to play and felt pretty solid so I can wholeheartedly recommend you try it :).
Right, so what you're saying is that 1 other card in your sideboard is more important than being able to win against something that is quite possible to happen against at least one popular deck? Which card would that be? Your argument 'it's bad, just win faster' just carries very little weight.
Besides, it's also not just to beat infinite life, it also wins when you're not able to attack for whatever crazy reason or through an angel's grace against repopularized ad nauseam. If you'd say that you should only run 1 alt win-con, then I'd agree, but that should be wealth over flesh//blood because flesh//blood does basically the same except it works in fewer situations. If you can't go off to the extend that you would win with a wealth, you're not much more likely to win with a single attacker or with flesh//blood. I've never not been able to win with wealth when I went for it, at least. Fatestitchers (or crimson wisps, I suppose) are an essential part to the plan to generate more and more mana as you're going off, so unless you brickly horribly, you should always be able to go to ~40 mana. 1 mana more or less really doesn't matter in that situation, which is what makes it better than mind grind in my opinion. Even though it's not likely that your opponent won't get milled out, it's way more likely than when their entire deck is exiled.
Sadly, the deck still seems wildly unplayable to me. Way too many bolts, BGx, Burn and fast decks (affinity, infect) in the Dutch meta.
I played in a fairly large 8-round tournament last sunday and went 4-4, facing mostly bad to abyssmal matchups. It's pretty sad that I have to shelf the deck again because I actually liked Nagging Thoughts a lot. It has many (small) upsides that make it a nice upgrade over Anticipate in my opinion.
Nagging thoughts is good against Liliana and discard in general (if they can help it they won't take it if you've got mana up).
It allows you to increase hand size when comboing, which is huge actually. Being able to narrowly go off and going from milling to profitably looting is quite a difference.
It puts the other card in the graveyard rather than on the bottom, so this gives you the option to put fatestitcher in the bin or something else (if running the gifts package, for example) as small upside.
The downsides vs anticipate are that you see 1 card fewer and that it's a sorcery. Unless someone makes you discard it's unlikely you get to cast it as 'instant', so that's not very relevant.
I played a 2-2 split manamorphose/nagging thoughts in the tournament because I anticipated (;)) my dorks dying a bit more than before the bannings so that I could use the mana more. I think it only happened once that the extra mana was useful, though. I also didn't run into those situations where nagging thoughts madnessed bailed me out, but it was never bad.
To recap, I played against:
UR Prowess Delver. loss, way too fast + disruption + he drew well and I didn't
RW aggro with only SoI cards. Yes, this sounds like a joke but I drew very poorly (and a mull to 5) in game 2 which made me go to g3 and even almost lost there. The downside of a pure combo deck is that you can just not find your combo and lose to any pile. Pretty funny, thankfully I did win.
BG Infect. Loss, he disrupts me, I draw meh and he has fast kills.
UG Infect. Win. He doesn't really know my deck and makes critical mistakes, handing me the win.
UG Infect. Loss. G2 he spaces out completely on what I did with my ideas unbound T3 (discard iona, rites and fatestitcher) so he taps out and I own him. Sadly, he won the die roll and won G1 and 3 on turn 3.
Burn. Loss. Games were over in 10 mins or so. I never got beyond 1 land. Total massacre.
Lantern Control. Win. First time I actually played against the deck with ascendancy and it actually seems fairly simple. The only problem I can imagine was surgical extraction but he didn't have it or find it. He actually thought bridge was good against me but that didn't help him, of course. He also let me keep cards he shouldn't, etc.
Jund. Win. He doesn't know my deck, I guess, because he doesn't pact my fatestitcher at a critical time. G3 I win on the back of Iona.
So in short I do like the gift plan from the SB but I don't think this deck is positioned very well at the moment :(.
Hi,
I did end up at 10/4 not playing the last round because of the plain i had to take to go home.
Sure i can describe my strategy versus jund.
For one zero leyline in the sides i had them but never wanted to borad them in even against jund.
For the creature it's fatestitcher and caryatid the rest is useless unless you have multiple so dig for these.
Lastly Silence and gitaxian probe are the nuts.
Our deck has consistency and redundancy which jund does not really like since they either want to race and do not disrupt us or they want disrupt us and they are leaving us time to get going.
Probe is the most important card in the deck because it allows us to have a plan and it's exactly the same against jund knowing what they have against you and how many discard you are facing is the key.
I took a lot more time planning my next turns against jund than any others since leaving a jeskai ascendancy on the with serum vision is way stronger than having it in hand.
wait for them to use your discard on the cantrips as long as you are not under pressure you do not have to find ascendancy.
I do not know if i was really clear if not do not hesitate i will try to do something with more content.
For vilainous wealth i believe that the wheel and one thought scour is enough and demands less work to win.
In the futur i am seriously thinking about going on a B plan in the sideboard which means gift package or 3 young pyro/2 monastery instead of the leylines or the counters. leylines have been really disappointing for me because the hate you take is the same as ascendancy.
Ah, I see. If you can leave an ascendancy on top with visions etc, then yes, that works well. Sadly, the chance this happens is pretty small. The reverse has happened a lot already, though, lol. I blind draw ascendancy from visions and have it immediately thoughtseized. Good times. I know it's possible to beat jund, but it takes a lot of things to go right (+ some things to go wrong on their end) which makes it generally a very bad matchup. I agree with you on leylines, though. Sometimes they're great and sometimes they're completely useless, but the average seems to be much more on the useless side of the spectrum. In recent tournaments I've swapped them out for a gifts package and that I like a lot more. The fact that this ascendancy list is not as heavy on the graveyard helps avoid some hate (I really didn't understand the gifts package in the jeskai combo-control version that leaned so hard on the gy) and with the mana dorks you can lock up the game a turn earlier. Even a t2 caryatid is good enough for that.
What do you mean by wheel and 1 thought scour? 1 scour in the main deck and then lose by default if you have to cast it early or have it discarded or something? Sure, going off with wealth takes a little while but this is not really a concern in paper magic.
Then my opinion on some of the new cards:
Traverse: leaning heavily on 'unplayable'. It's super slow and redundant redundancy in a deck as consistent as ours.
Thing in the Ice: unplayable. If you want a big single win con creature, just go for gifts.
Nagging thoughts: Could be interesting. Sure, up front it's worse than anticipate but the madness option makes it potentially useful. Will have to test.
Your maindeck is fine, though I'd never go below 4 Ideas Unbound. It's too important to draw when comboing and fine before that.
Your sideboard is a bit weird, though. Why destructive revelry over Wear // Tear and why wheel of sun and moon without Thought Scour? Sure, you can make your dorks infinite/infinite, but that doesn't help against an active infinite life combo or angel's grace or whatever. If you're going to run a singleton answer to wish for, might as well make it Villainous Wealth.
I choose destructive revelry over wear/tear mainly for ad nauseam..We combo but he plays angel's grace...we tutor destructive for bolt him before draw the first card of turn...I dunno, i think i will try Villainous Wealth becouse you'r right for infinite live. Wheel is for living end, goryo reanimator and why not, also for finks combo
I don't quite follow the logic against ad nauseam. Is this if they angel's grace to survive your combo turn or when they go off? If it's the latter, then it won't work because you're not going to get another turn as they'll kill you on the spot. Also, if they angel's grace, which target is there for destructive?
I forgot Wheel can also go on them, hehe. Seems a reasonable answer to those decks, yes, except that it's pretty slow to wish and cast. The combo decks are too fast and company can hit their pridemage or reclamation sage while beating you down.
Hi i went to GP Bologna as weel and ended 10/4 after a 10/2 run having to win the last three to make top 8.
I defeat UWR, Jund X 3, Affinity, Eldrazi UW, Poison X 2, Living End and UW. Lost to UW Eldrazi (12th), Storm (11th), Merfolk and Lantern Control.
I am on the 4 manamorphose list with 12 creatures.
The deck felt great and with a bit more experience on keeps and tight turns i could have gone all the way.
The only downside was the sideboard which has been absolutely useless except for jeskai ascendancy, flesh blood and scarscale ritual.
I will try to post an updated decklist as soon as i can after this GP.
Nice result :). Pity you ended up 10-5 in the end. Quite amazing you beat jund 3 times, though. Can you tell us how those matches went? I'm very curious because beating it 3 times sounds like more than luck to me hehe.
I'm a bit surprised that you apparently never wished for abrupt decay, wear//tear or guttural response. Did you just have the nuts every time to go off T3 on the play or did they just not have anything to stop you? I'm pretty sure you'd have wished for wealth if you had played against company. Well, unless they just never found their combo of course, but if they did you'd be pretty dead without it.
Your maindeck is fine, though I'd never go below 4 Ideas Unbound. It's too important to draw when comboing and fine before that.
Your sideboard is a bit weird, though. Why destructive revelry over Wear // Tear and why wheel of sun and moon without Thought Scour? Sure, you can make your dorks infinite/infinite, but that doesn't help against an active infinite life combo or angel's grace or whatever. If you're going to run a singleton answer to wish for, might as well make it Villainous Wealth.
Last weekend I played in GP Bologna and unfortunately didn't even make day 2 despite 2 byes. Needless to say I was rather disappointed, though unfortunately I messed up 2 games myself. I played the last list I posted with the updated sideboard and manabase, with 1 small adjustment. I took out 1 Anticipate for a Manamorphose to hedge against Blood Moon and for speed because I saw quite a few blue moon or other main deck blood moon decks on Friday. Also, it's nice to be able to side it out and still wish for it to make more mana in (very) specific situations.
R3 I played against affinity and won the die roll. I combo'd him out easily T4, but I'd have died on the draw. On the other hand I could probably have wished for Fracturing Gust and blow him out if I was on the draw, now I could just easily combo. G2 I boarded in a wear//tear to have the option of a quick answer to a plating or the like and a potential chalice. I ended up being able to combo t3, starting the combo with destroying his plating, but not being able to continue after that as I didn't loot into a spell. This took away his clock and I could combo him out next turn.
R4 I played against Jund, which is the nightmare matchup. G1 my hand got torn apart and he had an Ooze to make fatestitchers dead, plus I didn't find a whole lot. G2 he got greedy and decayed a bird for no particular reason, which left him with no answer to an eventual ascendancy, so when I found one I combo'd him out.
G3 I mulled to 5 (2 no-landers with 0 potential) which included a leyline. Sadly, his hand didn't contain any discard, but did include land destruction (fulminator mage and boom//bust) which slowed me down enough to never really get the option to combo. Also, when I finally succumbed to his threat (ooze again) he showed me a hand of multiple answers to ascendancy. Yep, nightmare matchup.
R5 I played against Blue Moon. The only card I was afraid of here was Anger of the Gods to kill my caryatids and all other dorks in 1 go, but he either didn't play it (unlikely) or just didn't find it. G2 I opted to keep a land rather than manamorphose from a sleight and that ended up hurting me (possibly) as he found blood moon a bit later. G3 I ended up not caring about the blood moon as it hurt him more than me and he could only cast 1 blue spell in response to my silence.
R6 I played against Grixis Reanimator (light control elements with breach/vengeance for griselbrand/emrakul) and just had a poor draw g1. He T4 breached me with emrakul, which was good enough as I couldn't find an ascendancy for my life. T1 he fetched mountain to bolt my bird, making me afraid of being burn, but then he played creeping tar pit. Losing that game felt pretty silly as I'm sure he could do almost nothing to stop me.
G2 he nut-draws me with T2 griselbrand, to which I respond with Silence. This may have been a mistake, as the emrakul in G1 should have alerted me to the fact he's not Grishoalbrand and likely doesn't really want to cast much after this, but it ended up with him drawing 21 cards and mistakenly exiling a spirit guide to bolt my noble, so he had to do it again on my upkeep. I couldn't go off on my turn and on his turn he could obviously vengeance an emrakul to finish me off.
R7 I played against Abzan Company and, again, I had trouble finding my combo while he had the T3 infinite life combo. I tried to disrupt him with silence and noxious revival (found a turn later) but he even ended up having company to put the finks back into play right away and scry to redcap. No, this was definitely not my luckiest tournament ever...
G2 I combo him out and don't remember much of it. G3, he mulls to 5 while I keep a good 1 lander with the plan of going fetch, shock, birds. Revival fetch on top, fetch shock wish + noble, T3 combo. However, I'm a big idiot and for some reason draw my card for the turn without playing revival. I don't luck out with a land and play anticipate into land + dork instead, trying to make up for lost time. He builds his board (drawing insanely well after going t1 bird and probing him with only land and finks in hand) and I wish for ascendancy + play caryatid. Then I make a major mistake in blocking a witness with caryatid when he has enough open mana/creatures to chord for 3, which he obviously drew and uses to wreck me with pontiff. Wow. I was a) insanely stupid and b) insanely unlucky in 1 game. Well, that's how you lose.
R8 I played against UW Eldrazi. G1 I combo him out as he didn't do all that much, the details are a bit fuzzy. G2 he's quick enough to put some pressure on and I have to try to combo with only 1 dork (think he went gut shot + dismember this game) and ideas unbound as my last card. So I draw 3 from unbound without being able to loot (only mill, which I do), but I draw into land land wisp and the wisp loots and draws into more dead stuff, so I fizzle and die. Did I mention luck was not on my side this tournament?
G3 he plays temple, I play bird. He plays vesuva copying temple and I have the option of either casting ascendancy, or caryatid. I mistakenly play caryatid, playing around disenchant, and get punished hard by him obviously having the much more likely thought-knot seer which takes my ascendancy. I never find another and die. I still don't understand why I talked myself into playing around white source + disenchant over thought-knot seer. Possibly some remnants of tilt from last round + it already being very late as the tournament was insanely slow kept me from thinking straight. Either way, my tournament was over.
R9 I got a bye from a no show.
I was running quite hot with the deck and to have it fall apart so horribly precisely during this GP was pretty tough to swallow. My matchups weren't great, but not necessarily horrible either (apart from Jund, of course) so with tight play I could have easily gone 7-2. Even though the meta was much more hostile than I expected, the deck still felt pretty good. Me not being able to find ascendancy would definitely not have been helped by not playing Anticipate so I still like that. The manamorphose I played was fine and never spectacular.
Last Sunday I had a bigger tournament (5 rounds with top 8) in which I went 3-1-1 (ID last round) in the swiss, but lost in very close games to an anti-combo version of CoCo in the top 8 (being on the draw) against a good player who has played against me with ascendancy combo often before. Bit of a letdown, but I did make a mistake that possibly cost me game 3. Btw, it's funny to mention that the meta had only 5 eldrazi decks in a field of 25 or so, but 10+ company decks.
R1 I played against UW Eldrazi and the fun started right away with a mull to 5, keeping a no-lander on the play (2 probes) while he also mulled to 5. The hand wasn't bad, except for lack of land, so I thought I'd keep on 5. I probe him to see Urborg, eye, path and 2 TKS. After 2 probes I still have no land and pass. He plays eye and I find another probe, but no land, and see that he drew flooded strand. He plays urborg and casts TKS to which I scoop as I still have no land and didn't cast anything other than those 3 probes. While sideboarding I realize that he couldn't even cast the TKS as he didn't have colorless, which earns him a warning but didn't really change much. All he could actually cast with that hand was path, but there's no way I can come back from this so I rather not show him what I'm playing.
G2 he starts with leyline of sanctity as he puts me on Storm, which is not unreasonable for him to think after what he saw, except that leyline does nothing against me, of course. Well, it does stop probe from targeting him so that earns me a warning. Fortunately I can also target myself (and I don't even have to reveal, it's look!) so I combo him out easily anyway because he clearly kept a poor hand that banked hard on leyline being good.
G3 he's stuck on eye + plains which casts him only mimics, endless ones and displacers. My draw is not particularly insane so when I finally probe him to test the waters I see he has an insane hand (2 TKS, smasher and disenchant), but can't actually cast any of it, so I go for it (turn 3) as I'm in very bad shape if he hits colorless and probably have to chump to survive his next attack anyway. I get there easily, as far as I remember.
R2 I'm paired against a relatively new player (never seen him in that scene before) who plays a homebrew RW aggro deck. This should be fine, except that I put him on heroic first (played against that the Friday before) and thus don't block with caryatid for fear of pump spells, which may have cost me the game as I take lethal from a bolt the turn before I could finally go off.
G2 is almost as awkward and slow as G1, except that I have only 1 lonely bird as mana dork and he's playing bolts... However, the turn after I fetch ascendancy and he checks what it does, he bolts me rather than my bird and even taps out after that for a flip Gideon, so I combo him out. Lucky.
G3 I think I have an easy t4 kill except that he topdecks land #3 and plays Nevermore, naming my freshly wished ascendancy. At this point I have 4 outs (3 wishes and a boarded decay) and a few turns to find it, but don't and die. Bleh.
R3 against Elves, on the draw, he has a decent hand that vomits a bunch of elves and shaman of the pack into play T3, but I topdeck an ascendancy and combo him out. I was digging hard for it, so even though it was the last possible moment to draw it, it doesn't feel all that lucky.
G2 he mulls to 5, which gives me time to find the combo, which I do with a few turns left before he would kill me. This match makes me think I want Fiery Justice back in my sideboard to make sure I can wreck a boardstate like that to give myself a lot of time.
R4 against burn. Eww.
G1 he mulls to 6 on the play but screws on 1 land the whole game, which makes it an easy win, despite him having a creature T1. Lucky.
G2 I see an opener of stomping ground, ascendancy, cantrips and leyline, which I keep. He goes guide into guide and I bemoan my luck, but he doesn't actually have more going than that when I probe him and see boros charm, searing blaze and land. I find a caryatid, which I use to combo with until I find silence to bring fatestitcher back safely (he has 3 unknowns + blaze in hand and a fetch on the table at the time) and easily combo him out. I forgot Blaze can't actually be cast when I have leyline out, but playing around bolt or helix as long as possible is good anyway. This match felt very lucky, though it also showed the power of leyline and caryatid.
In the top 8 against abzan company, game 1 he assembles his combo on his upkeep T4 or so and scries a card to the top. I'm slightly nervous here because even though I can combo off next turn, if he has any interaction I'm dead. It turns out he scried Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit to the top which he casts, tapping him out except for Melira (chorded on upkeep) and Anafenza. They're arbitrarily large, but can't attack due to summoning sickness. On my turn, I combo him out and after I go ascendancy #2 into #3, he asks me how I plan to win, so I show him the wealth and he scoops. He forgot I can win through infinite life, otherwise he'd have scried his 1 main deck decay to the top..
G2 I race to combo off but the turn before I can he chords for 4 and gets Linvala. I was very mana screwed that game (1 land and 2 mana dorks in play) so I just played ascendancy hoping he had nothing so I could combo off next turn. Sadly, he had far from nothing as after Linvala I wished for an answer (abzan charm), he found Sin Collector to exile it right away. Here, I again wish I had a Fiery Justice in my board. Instead, I try to dig for my Slaughter Pact but don't find it before I die.
G3 his hand is slightly awkward with overgrown tomb and township as his lands, but he also has t1 bird with abrupt decay, witness and fulminator mage in hand. I'm also on a 1 lander, but have plenty of mana dorks. He fulminators my land and I play more dorks, eventually ending up with 2 nobles and 2 caryatids next to a lonely breeding pool. I find a Silence to play around his decay but he sin collectors me, seeing wish, noxious revival and silence, taking the silence.
I wish for an ascendancy and topdeck another ascendancy, but am low on (cheap) cards so I can't combo through his decay. I need to be able to cast both ascendancies in 1 turn or else he can decay, untap, witness back decay and decay again on the next try. He then witnesses back something I don't remember. Here I mess up by thinking I should not EoT revival something to the top and instead increase my handsize so I can loot profitably. However, in my chosen line, where I plan to play ascendancy, revival, get decayed, play new ascendancy, I need to hit a 1 mana spell in either the loot or my draw step, but I do neither and get my 2nd ascendancy decayed because he ends up having another witness. If I put Ideas Unbound back on top EoT and went ascendancy into ideas unbound, I get a draw 3 to find a 1 mana spell and then have 2 spares to loot away. My draws after that punt were lands and dorks, if I remember correctly, so I wouldn't have made it anyway, but that line was strictly better than what I did.
After the tournament I discuss the tournament and our decks over dinner with a friend and at some point I tell my friend that I never actually fetched Temple Garden in any game in the past tournaments, preferring to go for hallowed fountain. This prompts him to say I should cut it and that makes a lot of sense as it's the one dual I can't fetch with Scalding Tarn and if I never fetched it, I apparently also don't need the fetch target. Scalding tarn is then the best option because it increases the chances of hitting the right land because a 1-lander with tarn is infinitely better than one with non-breeding pool-dual or basic. Similarly, I never wish for flesh//blood except for killing slightly faster so it seems rather redundant. Abzan charm I do wish for quite a bit as 2nd draw 2 because sometimes you just draw tons of lands, dorks and wishes. Abzan charm is almost the perfect flexible wish target, the only downside being it costing black mana, which can be an issue when linvala is on the battlefield. This leads to the conclusion that I want to swap temple garden for scalding tarn and flesh blood for fiery justice, so I made those changes.
So last night I played in another 4-round FNM and went 4-0 again, playing against eldrazi (UW) only once, in the finals. My other opponents were RW heroic, elves and merfolk.
R1 wasn't very exciting. His draws were not particularly insane and I combo off T3 in 2 games. He did get me fairly low so I can imagine this not being a great matchup necessarily.
R2 against Elves I combo off T4 and 3. Game 1 was fairly interesting because he vomitted out a lot of elves but isn't really threatening lethal yet (I'm at 16 when he untaps). My draw is not great and I end up in ithe situation of having Pact, wish and loot fodder with 3 land and 3 mana dorks. I wish for ascendancy and play it, but don't try to combo because I need to exactly loot into something or fizzle right away. If I wait, I can pump my dorks and eat some elves, hope to loot/draw into something and then combo off. He attacks with everything and I pact his Sentinel, untapping my team and blocking 2 mana elves and a 2-power elite. This makes me go down to 11, after which he plays shaman of the pack, dropping me to 5. I looted into an ideas unbound so I untap and combo him out.
R3 against Merfolk was a bit weird. G1 I go off T4 through a dismember because of having Caryatids and finding silence before unearthing fatestitcher, though I could also have done without it, probably. He has cursecatcher but because I'm going off fairly late, I can always keep up enough mana to never get bricked by that.
G2, however, was fairly intense. I mull to 6 with no land, but with cantrips, ascendancy, bird and 2 probes, he mulls to 5. He plays land, I play probe #1 and see dismember, remand, lord of atlantis and island. I play probe #2 and hit gemstone mine. I don't want to allow him to use his mana so I cast a cantrip instead of bird, which finds me another bird and I scry a misty to the top. He plays lord and passes. I play misty, fetch breeding pool and play another cantrip. He untaps, plays land 3 and another lord, then passes. I find another bird, which I play with pool and pass after playing tapped stomping ground. At this point I have an abrupt decay in hand (sided in in case of chalice) and he EoT vapor snags my non-summoning sick birds, so I respond by tapping it and mine to decay a lord so I don't take 6 unblockable each turn. He untaps, dismembers my remaining bird and passes with 2 mana open. I draw a caryatid, which I want to resolve most. I bait him with birds but he allows it, after which I play the caryatid anyway, and he also lets it resolve. Now I can block his lord. I play another caryatid which he also allows and next turn, with 6 mana in play, I play Silence (remand), ascendancy, ideas unbound and combo him out. From how he played it was obvious he didn't have anything after the remand and I also was dead to any top deck that gives islandwalk to his lord so it didn't seem safe to wait. He could have easily slowed me down sufficiently to win (I ended the game at 3) by simply using his remand somewhere earlier but his fear of the big combo piece killed him. Somewhere in that game he actually allowed me to cast bird into bird, using up my gemstone mine, but I'm unsure where this fits in the time line. I do know I was down to 1 land (breeding pool) at some point due to this.
R4 against UW eldrazi, I lose g1 due to keeping a hand with only a few land and cantrips on the draw. His draw with eye mimic (he had this all 3 games) into beaters was too fast for my slow draw without mana dork. I know it seems obvious that it's pretty much impossible to keep a hand without some kind of mana dork, but this is testing, so I wanted to test.
G2 I win fairly easily despite him gut shotting 1 of my birds t2. Would have been easy t3 kill without it, but he wasn't fast enough to punish me.
G3 he plays in a way that represents disenchant, which he ends up having. Still, his board doesn't allow me to wait another turn so I go for it T3 with 2 dorks by wishing for and casting ascendancy into probe for 2 life, to which he responds with disenchant, to which I respond with pact on his biggest eldrazi (displacer). I make 4 mana, loot into another ascendancy, discarding ideas unbound (last other card in hand sleight) and go off again. I quickly find ideas unbound, only having to sweat it for 2 cantrips and easily kill him from there.
So, when you run well this deck is fairly unbeatable ;). When you don't, it's still very likely to win against decks with slower combos and/or little interaction. Only when under severe pressure does interaction really hurt and then really only when it takes out one of the least redundant pieces (ascendancy). This is also why this is not a playable deck in a meta with a significant presence of BGx, but fortunately this is not the case at the moment :).
@Velthov
A few things:
Play fewer city of brass. I played 4 in Madrid 2014 and it hurts way too much for such a fast deck. It's much better having gemstone mine because you're supposed to have won before they run out, but it's very possible to die before you win when you have cities instead. One reason why I like my mana base so much is because you don't necessarily have to kill yourself each time.
Misty rainforest is the best fetch, but I guess that's obvious.
Forest is bad. It doesn't cast ascendancy and it doesn't cast cantrips. Sure, it casts mana dork, but those don't find you your missing pieces, blue spells do. If you're worried about blood moon, island does almost the same thing because it requires only 1 mana dork to still be able to cast ascendancy and the cantrips you can cast with it will help you get there faster.
I recommend the full 4 caryatid because they don't cost 1 (chalice), have hexproof and can block small things the turn you play it. Because of win cons from the side, them having defender is not relevant. Every damage you can save matters (provided there's no risk of caryatid dying due to pump) as it can be the difference between dying now or next turn.
Wisps are played to get from 1 to 2 mana when comboing with 1 dork. It doesn't really make sense to play 3 of those with 8 1-mana dorks and 4 fatestitcher.
4 Ideas Unbound. No, really. You have no main deck way of increasing your hand size, which is absolutely vital to succesful comboing (not to mention the odds of hitting cantrips when drawing 3). In magical christmas land, you go off T2/3 every time with plenty of cards to spare for profitable looting, but it frequently happens you're constricted and need to be able to loot chaff away while keeping cantrips. As you can read in the report(s) above, casting ideas unbound is the win con from which it becomes trivial to win. This deck used to be insane with treasure cruise because it allowed you to do it for 1 mana. Even when played pre-combo, it's fine to sculpt your hand or dig for something you really need right now.
Why 2 flesh//blood in the side? In which situation do you see yourself able to wish for 2 of them, but not be able to make the first 1 lethal?
Why izzet staticaster? What problem does this solve or what strategy is completely hosed by this?
Why 2 wear//tear?
Meddling mage I'm not so sure about either. What strategy does it completely hose that it's worth it to wish for and cast it? The only one that really comes to mind is Ad Nauseam, where they don't have a reasonable way to get rid of it and naming Ad nauseam surely stops them from winning, but that seems rather fringe, unless it's big in your meta of course.
I'm not a big fan of spellskite in this deck. I think the anti-synergy is too big and it's too expensive. Silence has more applications, is cheaper, stops multiple answers at the same time and triggers ascendancy.
Swan song could be good. I'm actually contemplating whether I should just concede the matchup to burn and BGx as I'm unlikely to see them and shore up my matchup against other combo decks while also being good against commonly played answers and having splash applications against blood moon and eidolons.
I played in a 4-round FNM yesterday, facing UR eldrazi, a non-playable deck, UG infect and RG eldrazi, going 4-0.
I'd like to highlight some interesting situations:
R1G1 against UR Eldrazi I'm on the play and we both mull to 6. I open with probe and serum visions and leave a caryatid on top after seeing a chalice and multiple dismembers. He goes T2 chalice for 1. I play Ascendancy (tapped out) and miss my land drop. He plays a matter reshaper I had seen with probe and passes. I untap with 2 land, ascendancy and caryatid in play, some cantrips, ideas unbound and wish in hand. I can go wish into decay and depending on what I loot into, I could try to continue comboing. I do this and as I'm looting, I find a silence and a 0 mana spell. This allows me to first turn off his dismembers and build mana for ideas unbound. This chains me into multiple free spells for more ideas unbound and eventually I hit a fatestitcher which I use to easily finish him off. Who cares about chalice ;).
R2 was practically a bye, but I did have some fun (because of being provoked, I swear) by comboing out to the fullest extent possible and killing by milling him out with villainous wealth and casting all his stuff. It at least yielded a nice photo with my very impressive board after doing that ;).
R3G1 we both mull to 6 and he scries to the bottom. Draws for his turn, expresses happiness about his draw and plays an elf, indicating he didn't actually have a creature before this draw. I build my board and he puts rancor on elf + might to put me on 7 poison, threatening 3 more from the elf next turn. Here I decide to not risk him having anything to make blocking impossible or not enough, so I wish for Decay instead of ascendancy and kill his elf. He doesn't find another creature and I combo him out 2 or so turns later.
R4G2 I'm on the draw and very constraint on mana. I mulled to a no-lander with 2 probes and birds that finds a gemstone cavern after draw + 1 probe. My opponent misplays t1 by fetching forest rather than playing grove to play his stirrings (finding TKS), which means he can't play t2 matter reshaper to put a clock on me. Then he plays TKS t3 and sees silence, probe, 2 wish and maybe something else irrelevant. Instead of taking probe to make it impossible to combo off without topdecking land in the next 2 turns (1 counter left on cavern) he takes my uncastable silence. I wish for ascendancy, he slams me with smasher + TKS which only puts me to 5 or so. I don't topdeck land but can use the probe to start comboing with caryatid and bird in play, so I easily combo him out.
The deck felt as great as I thought it would and I'm anxiously looking forward to GP Bologna, hoping The Enemy (BGx) doesn't find a solution to the eldrazis before then. It's a little disconcerting to see Jund and Death cloud in the top 8 of a fairly big event in russia (see MTGtop8.com), but they're probably not even close to as prevalent as before Oath came out. Tonight there's another 4-round FNM, hoping to crush all opposition again ;).
First of all, I strongly advise you to cut to 60 cards main deck. You're playing essentially a combo deck which needs to find specific cards, so you want to have the biggest chance possible of doing that.
I'd cut the faithless looting because the combo really dislikes going down on cards and your interaction with the gy is not big either. You're already playing bolts, gut shots and izzet charms that also don't cantrip. If you cut thought scour and visions, you definitely don't want faithless looting anymore. I'd play 4 sleight and 2 ideas unbound instead of scour and visions and simply cut the looting to go down to 60 cards. Even without ascendancy, ideas is fine to cast as many spells as possible for YP/Mentor and then dump useless land at eot (or kill them). Because you rely quite a bit on fatestitcher to combo, I'd keep the scours.
This version of JAC has way fewer issues with blood moon than the wish version, so I'd skip the manamorphose. I'm not sure I agree with no path to exile, though. It kills big things that set a real clock on you, which bolt doesn't. You're not as super fast as the wish version with mana dorks, so if you can't answer a T2 TKS, Goyf or whatever else with 4+ toughness, you're under a lot of pressure. I'd probably cut the think twice, an izzet charm and a gut shot for path, or at least 2 of those 3.
I can imagine that the Life from the Loam/Flame Jab combo is good against BGx, but that seems not to be such a big part of the meta currently.
I'd board in Abrupt Decay against Chalice of the Void, not Wear//Tear. If they put it on 2, you can't cast wear//tear to kill it, nor wish for Decay, and you definitely also need to get rid of chalice on 2 for Ideas Unbound, Wish, Caryatid and Anticipate, etc, if they manage to drop it before you can go off.
Sadly I couldn't make it to the tournament of tonight, but I did goldfish some games to see whether Villainous Wealth is an option as single target to deal with infinite life or things like Deflecting Palm. It was actually pretty easy to get to sufficient mana even when starting with only 1 manadork, provided that fatestitcher isn't very deep in the deck. The next opportunity to test this for me is somewhere next week, and then I'll most likely try this sideboard:
To explain these choices:
- Leyline is key against BGx and burn. Unfortunately they already board in enchantment removal anyway, but the potential to turn off their hand is too good because without it, you're in quite some trouble. I've tried other strategies as well (like Young Pyromancer) but these don't really cover the required bases. You can't board too much with this deck, so I prefer to have mostly wish targets and few others, unless they are very high impact, such as leyline.
- 1 Silence. When Silence is good, it's great, so I like having access to at least 1 more.
- Jeskai Ascendancy goes without saying.
- Scarscale Ritual is similarly uncuttable. Turning the first (remaining) wish into a draw 2 for 2 is very important to keep the combo going.
- Abrupt Decay. Best cheap general answer to many problematic permanents, such as Eidolon of Rhetoric, Chalice of the Void, cards that prevent certain cards from being cast such as Meddling Mage or Nevermore
- Wear // Tear. Gets rid of many problematic things for very cheap and gives a 2nd answer next to decay. Very useful to be able to board in the decay and still have wear // tear to wish for against eidolon (revel) or chalice. I only board in the decay when the problem is a Big problem, such as Chalice or eidolon of the great revel. In the first case because a chalice on 2 would turn off all 2 drops forever and the 2nd because I want an option to deal with eidolon without having to tutor for it. Decay then makes the best choice to board in because it's cheaper to wish for wear // tear and thus more likely you can play it early enough.
- Flesh // Blood. Allows (easily) winning without combat. This is relevant when you can't attack or when you need to tap the opponent out in the first main phase, for example when they have Cryptic Command or something else that won't really stop you from comboing but does stop you from swinging for the win. To be honest, I've not have this card in my sideboard for a while before because not being able to win through damage when you run fatestitchers is pretty unlikely as are the other cornercases in which you can't attack for the win. However, because the deck only relies on the gy due to fatestitcher and it's a relevant option to side those out to dodge all hate they might board in (in my experience people go nuts against you with that) you can get in the situation where you have to combo with only caryatid which can't attack.
- Sigarda. Sigarda is basically the backup plan when ascendancy fails. This may happen for 2 reasons, 1) because ascendancy gets Surgical Extractioned and 2) because BGx has ripped your hand and board to shreds, making it extremely unlikely to combo. This then makes it possible to topdeck a wish and get sigarda + cast her and BGx is quite cold to it, provided they aren't about to kill you with multiple creatures. Sigarda has been quite good for me in multiple cases, also against other decks.
- Fracturing Gust. With all these mana dorks, it's not unreasonable to wish for and cast this fairly early, after which affinity has a pretty hard time winning the race and also bogles can pack it in. Due to it being a single wish target, it'll never clutter up your hand and when it works, it's very high impact and probably game winning.
- Abzan Charm. Some cmc 4+ creatures are quite problematic, main offender being Linvala, Keeper of Silence. I used to run Fiery Justice as this would kill linvala even through a spellskite, but I like charm also being a draw 2 while being unable to be redirected to a spellskite (the large majority of the time, of course). If you play against gifts and they name blue on Iona, Shield of Emeria, thinking you can't combo like that, you also get to charm their iona..
- Villainous Wealth. As mentioned already above, this card allows you to win through problems such as an opponent with infinite life or Deflecting palm. You could work around palm by tapping them out and using flesh/blood on whatever creature they didn't choose, but it's nice to have the option. Depending on your life total, it's probably safest to not let them untap, so I'd always go for the kill on my own turn with flesh/blood, if able.
- Guttural Response. Tutorable cheap counter-counterspell. Because our deck is so fast, it's usually enough to stop 1 answer and that makes this a tutorable silence.
I'm also considering Meddling Mage and Dreadbore. Meddling Mage is good against non-interactive combo (except the mirror, hehe) such as storm and ad nauseam, but probably not against much else. Dreadbore could be a cheap way to kill problematic creatures and planeswalkers that aren't covered by abrupt decay/charm, but nothing really comes to mind. Swan Song would also be a nice option to stop blood moon and eidolon (and some tricks while comboing), but there's no space for it at the moment.
Lastly, I also switched the mana base around a bit. I liked having all fetches be able to fetch all duals, but I didn't like not all fetches being able to get the island. I can imagine your mana base gives you perfect mana every time, Arkaedian, but at what cost? Being able to fetch basic island has saved my ass on numerous occasions because 2 life is a lot in a deck that easily deals 10 dmg to itself. Also, in this meta with a million ghost quarters (and path), not running a basic seems very dubious to me. I replaced the 3 wooded foothills with 1 hallowed fountain and 2 scalding tarns to make sure all fetches still fetch white mana (and also to have a 2nd dual that makes white due to the ghost quarters in the meta). This means 2 lands don't cast a turn 1 bird/noble, but unless that's the only land I have, that shouldn't be too much of a problem. Hallowed fountain also makes it possible to fix all color in 2 lands with stomping ground, which is nice.
Nice record, Arkaidian. How did those matches play out? I suppose CoCo didn't combo against you? How about blood moon from blue moon? And spreading seas perhaps?
You're in for a rude awakening when you test against burn and BGx ;).
To be honest I don't think you want plans over snapcaster. Snapcaster is pretty much the best card in the deck (because you don't run cryptic ;)). I'm not sure why you want more offense in a deck that doesn't attack at all. Kolaghan's Command is great even with just 4 snapcaster because you can always get a 2-for-1 with it and get even more value by returning a snapcaster. I'm running a single Tasigur because it also synergizes well with snapcaster and unless it gets pathed, I can get it back with Kommand.
I'm also having a hard time with your 4 manlands. The main way you lose is by not being able to interact enough to prevent yourself from getting overrun by all the linear decks in the format. Forced taplands are horrible in this crucial part of the game and for me a reason to move to the Scars Fastlands over some of the M10 duals.
Unfortunately, Plans hasn't been good for me so far. When I still played 2 I rarely wanted to cast it due to the pressure being applied to me + I often boarded it out. Later, as a 1-off in my current list I rarely cast it and when I did, it's too low impact or too late to lock them out. The thing that really kills it is the 1 spell a turn clause. That makes it a nombo with snapcaster mage and also makes it a useless topdeck when you have to put the 3rd trigger of a pact on the stack. I'm considering going to either 4 pacts, 3 offering and a dark petition or 3 pact, 3 offering, a dark petition and a 4th cryptic/dismember/something else. Dark petition seems like an interesting card in this deck in that it is controlling enough to be able to cast petition before dying (and having spell mastery). On T6/7 it's possible to petition into an offering and cast it right away, which is basically what you need. The big question is how to make sure that the BBB from spell mastery isn't wasted when you don't go for offering. Damnation and pact curve nicely into it, but I don't want to play damnation main (the curve is high as it is already). Dismember offers the flexibility of casting it T1 as well as T5 after petitioning for it, so that's nice. I also moved Anger to the sideboard.
Lastly, the one thing I did like a lot are changes to the mana base I made and the 3 Inquisition of Kozilek that I added instead of a spell snare, offering and the 2nd plans. I swapped out a watery grave for a Sunken Hollow and a sulfur falls and drowned catacomb for blackcleave cliffs and darkslick shores. Fast pain-free mana is important and it's quite easy to have 2 basics out to make sunken hollow an underground sea, which is awesome. Leading on dual, then basic basic sunken hollow is the perfect mana base that also plays around blood moon fairly well. As well as can be expected in this deck at least because blood moon is always going to be very hard to beat in this deck. Because of that, I just swapped out my 3rd island for Desolate Lighthouse because the filtering and option to discard useless offerings is just necessary and instead of cryptic I can also use explosives to get rid of the moon. There are a few matchups in which Engineered Explosives is great and it's also a neat answer to both blood moon and choke, so I'll be upping the count to 2 in the side board.
Thanks! Good luck :).
Well, the issue with a 'combo' deck such as this is having dead cards and dying before you can execute your game plan. Harmless Offering literally does nothing (well, worse than nothing) when you have nothing bad to offer so it's the worst draw in your deck when you need to survive or find a plans/pact in the first place. The question to ask is: how does card X help with surviving until you can offer something to win the game or with finding a combo piece? Copy enchantment only copies something that is already on the battlefield so clearly, you're not looking for something to offer: you already have it. It would help in finding offering by copying a plans or pact (if you have the time to wait for a trigger with pact) but beyond that it does nothing at all. When you get beat down by Goblin Guide or combo'd by Ad Nauseam, a card that does literally nothing before turn 5 in the best case scenario is not what you're looking for.
The reason to add blue to this deck is that it offers card selection and draw, cheap general interaction and the best get-out-of-jail-free card that does everything you want in Cryptic Command plus the ability to recur everything in Snapcaster Mage. I don't think you can afford to not play blue when you have to prepare for a long game considering that you can't win before turn 7, contrary to fx Grishoalbrand.
Yesterday I played in an FNM and went 3-0 with the following list:
4 Polluted Delta
2 Watery Grave
2 Steam Vents
1 Blood Crypt
2 Sulfur Falls
1 Drowned Catacomb
2 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Swamp
3 Island
1 Mountain
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Terminate
1 Dreadbore
3 Mana Leak
2 Spell Snare
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Electrolyze
1 Anger of the Gods
4 Harmless Offering
3 Demonic Pact
2 Colfenor's Plans
1 Immortal Coil
2 Cryptic Command
4 Thoughtseize
1 Slaughter Games
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Spellskite
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Damnation
1 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
2 Dispel
1 Crypt Incursion
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Olivia Voldaren
I played against BTL Scapeshift with prismatic Omen, Grixis Delver and Skred Red and in principle the main plan worked out fine. I won all but 1 game by offering a pact or plans after gaining control also with the help of those pacts/plans. I was pretty impressed with pact and how it fit in the deck. It's great to be able to draw extra cards, obviously, but the Warleader's Helix combines nicely with other burn to kill something you'd otherwise need Terminate for and making them discard 2 the turn you plan on offering it to them also helps a lot in fighting counterspells or other answers. If you ever catch them with <3 cards in hand, they lose their sandbagged counterspell or answer. In the worst case scenario, they have to kill your pact right there before you even play the offering which makes sure you don't die to it. I never lost the game by locking myself out.
The plans also impressed me because they are indeed just a draw 7 in a combo-control deck, which is as awesome as it sounds. The fact that offering makes it a win con as well makes it pretty good. It's not insane, because the 1 spell per turn limit is still pretty harsh, but with sufficient instants in the deck, it's not hard to play 2 spells a cycle + a land to drain the plans in 2 turns and then bounce/offer it. Against the prismatic omen deck I boarded them out for obvious reasons, but other than that I kept in at least 1 because it digs so well against decks that can't remove it or punish you for it.
That brings me to the reason why I think this is actually a deck and not just a joke: 4 mana enchantments are not easily dealt with in Modern and a 3 mana sorcery is uncounterable by at least 2 popular counterspells (Spell Snare and Dispel) while being cheap enough to recast via Snapcaster Mage and Goblin Dark-Dwellers or through a Remand. This makes it much more robust than Twin was against the BGx decks. Having so few creatures also makes removal fairly terrible against you and otherwise the Kommands rebuy them.
The only thing I plan on changing in my current list is cutting the last Immortal Coil. It's just too slow and underwhelming not to mention risky in this deck that I'd rather have a 4th pact or, more likely, more interaction or a 3rd cryptic. Having to find at least 1 out of just 6 answers to your own pact/plans is maybe mathematically too unlikely in the draw 7 of plans, for example. Cryptic is also just an awesome card so it's tempting to just jam 4, but I don't think the curve can take it. I didn't really feel like I needed more than 3 pacts because it's not a combo deck in the sense that it has to assemble its combo asap and because it doesn't impact the board the turn you play it, you really don't want to be pact flooded.
I used to have a Desolate Lighthouse in the list but I'm afraid the manabase can't handle it at 23 lands. It does work well with plans to not lock yourself out so it's definitely interesting. The Immortal Coil may well become a loothouse as well.
Anyway, the deck was a blast to play and felt pretty solid so I can wholeheartedly recommend you try it :).
Besides, it's also not just to beat infinite life, it also wins when you're not able to attack for whatever crazy reason or through an angel's grace against repopularized ad nauseam. If you'd say that you should only run 1 alt win-con, then I'd agree, but that should be wealth over flesh//blood because flesh//blood does basically the same except it works in fewer situations. If you can't go off to the extend that you would win with a wealth, you're not much more likely to win with a single attacker or with flesh//blood. I've never not been able to win with wealth when I went for it, at least. Fatestitchers (or crimson wisps, I suppose) are an essential part to the plan to generate more and more mana as you're going off, so unless you brickly horribly, you should always be able to go to ~40 mana. 1 mana more or less really doesn't matter in that situation, which is what makes it better than mind grind in my opinion. Even though it's not likely that your opponent won't get milled out, it's way more likely than when their entire deck is exiled.
Sadly, the deck still seems wildly unplayable to me. Way too many bolts, BGx, Burn and fast decks (affinity, infect) in the Dutch meta.
Nagging thoughts is good against Liliana and discard in general (if they can help it they won't take it if you've got mana up).
It allows you to increase hand size when comboing, which is huge actually. Being able to narrowly go off and going from milling to profitably looting is quite a difference.
It puts the other card in the graveyard rather than on the bottom, so this gives you the option to put fatestitcher in the bin or something else (if running the gifts package, for example) as small upside.
The downsides vs anticipate are that you see 1 card fewer and that it's a sorcery. Unless someone makes you discard it's unlikely you get to cast it as 'instant', so that's not very relevant.
I played a 2-2 split manamorphose/nagging thoughts in the tournament because I anticipated (;)) my dorks dying a bit more than before the bannings so that I could use the mana more. I think it only happened once that the extra mana was useful, though. I also didn't run into those situations where nagging thoughts madnessed bailed me out, but it was never bad.
To recap, I played against:
UR Prowess Delver. loss, way too fast + disruption + he drew well and I didn't
RW aggro with only SoI cards. Yes, this sounds like a joke but I drew very poorly (and a mull to 5) in game 2 which made me go to g3 and even almost lost there. The downside of a pure combo deck is that you can just not find your combo and lose to any pile. Pretty funny, thankfully I did win.
BG Infect. Loss, he disrupts me, I draw meh and he has fast kills.
UG Infect. Win. He doesn't really know my deck and makes critical mistakes, handing me the win.
UG Infect. Loss. G2 he spaces out completely on what I did with my ideas unbound T3 (discard iona, rites and fatestitcher) so he taps out and I own him. Sadly, he won the die roll and won G1 and 3 on turn 3.
Burn. Loss. Games were over in 10 mins or so. I never got beyond 1 land. Total massacre.
Lantern Control. Win. First time I actually played against the deck with ascendancy and it actually seems fairly simple. The only problem I can imagine was surgical extraction but he didn't have it or find it. He actually thought bridge was good against me but that didn't help him, of course. He also let me keep cards he shouldn't, etc.
Jund. Win. He doesn't know my deck, I guess, because he doesn't pact my fatestitcher at a critical time. G3 I win on the back of Iona.
So in short I do like the gift plan from the SB but I don't think this deck is positioned very well at the moment :(.
Ah, I see. If you can leave an ascendancy on top with visions etc, then yes, that works well. Sadly, the chance this happens is pretty small. The reverse has happened a lot already, though, lol. I blind draw ascendancy from visions and have it immediately thoughtseized. Good times. I know it's possible to beat jund, but it takes a lot of things to go right (+ some things to go wrong on their end) which makes it generally a very bad matchup. I agree with you on leylines, though. Sometimes they're great and sometimes they're completely useless, but the average seems to be much more on the useless side of the spectrum. In recent tournaments I've swapped them out for a gifts package and that I like a lot more. The fact that this ascendancy list is not as heavy on the graveyard helps avoid some hate (I really didn't understand the gifts package in the jeskai combo-control version that leaned so hard on the gy) and with the mana dorks you can lock up the game a turn earlier. Even a t2 caryatid is good enough for that.
What do you mean by wheel and 1 thought scour? 1 scour in the main deck and then lose by default if you have to cast it early or have it discarded or something? Sure, going off with wealth takes a little while but this is not really a concern in paper magic.
Then my opinion on some of the new cards:
Traverse: leaning heavily on 'unplayable'. It's super slow and redundant redundancy in a deck as consistent as ours.
Thing in the Ice: unplayable. If you want a big single win con creature, just go for gifts.
Nagging thoughts: Could be interesting. Sure, up front it's worse than anticipate but the madness option makes it potentially useful. Will have to test.
I don't quite follow the logic against ad nauseam. Is this if they angel's grace to survive your combo turn or when they go off? If it's the latter, then it won't work because you're not going to get another turn as they'll kill you on the spot. Also, if they angel's grace, which target is there for destructive?
I forgot Wheel can also go on them, hehe. Seems a reasonable answer to those decks, yes, except that it's pretty slow to wish and cast. The combo decks are too fast and company can hit their pridemage or reclamation sage while beating you down.
Nice result :). Pity you ended up 10-5 in the end. Quite amazing you beat jund 3 times, though. Can you tell us how those matches went? I'm very curious because beating it 3 times sounds like more than luck to me hehe.
I'm a bit surprised that you apparently never wished for abrupt decay, wear//tear or guttural response. Did you just have the nuts every time to go off T3 on the play or did they just not have anything to stop you? I'm pretty sure you'd have wished for wealth if you had played against company. Well, unless they just never found their combo of course, but if they did you'd be pretty dead without it.
Your sideboard is a bit weird, though. Why destructive revelry over Wear // Tear and why wheel of sun and moon without Thought Scour? Sure, you can make your dorks infinite/infinite, but that doesn't help against an active infinite life combo or angel's grace or whatever. If you're going to run a singleton answer to wish for, might as well make it Villainous Wealth.
Last weekend I played in GP Bologna and unfortunately didn't even make day 2 despite 2 byes. Needless to say I was rather disappointed, though unfortunately I messed up 2 games myself. I played the last list I posted with the updated sideboard and manabase, with 1 small adjustment. I took out 1 Anticipate for a Manamorphose to hedge against Blood Moon and for speed because I saw quite a few blue moon or other main deck blood moon decks on Friday. Also, it's nice to be able to side it out and still wish for it to make more mana in (very) specific situations.
R3 I played against affinity and won the die roll. I combo'd him out easily T4, but I'd have died on the draw. On the other hand I could probably have wished for Fracturing Gust and blow him out if I was on the draw, now I could just easily combo. G2 I boarded in a wear//tear to have the option of a quick answer to a plating or the like and a potential chalice. I ended up being able to combo t3, starting the combo with destroying his plating, but not being able to continue after that as I didn't loot into a spell. This took away his clock and I could combo him out next turn.
R4 I played against Jund, which is the nightmare matchup. G1 my hand got torn apart and he had an Ooze to make fatestitchers dead, plus I didn't find a whole lot. G2 he got greedy and decayed a bird for no particular reason, which left him with no answer to an eventual ascendancy, so when I found one I combo'd him out.
G3 I mulled to 5 (2 no-landers with 0 potential) which included a leyline. Sadly, his hand didn't contain any discard, but did include land destruction (fulminator mage and boom//bust) which slowed me down enough to never really get the option to combo. Also, when I finally succumbed to his threat (ooze again) he showed me a hand of multiple answers to ascendancy. Yep, nightmare matchup.
R5 I played against Blue Moon. The only card I was afraid of here was Anger of the Gods to kill my caryatids and all other dorks in 1 go, but he either didn't play it (unlikely) or just didn't find it. G2 I opted to keep a land rather than manamorphose from a sleight and that ended up hurting me (possibly) as he found blood moon a bit later. G3 I ended up not caring about the blood moon as it hurt him more than me and he could only cast 1 blue spell in response to my silence.
R6 I played against Grixis Reanimator (light control elements with breach/vengeance for griselbrand/emrakul) and just had a poor draw g1. He T4 breached me with emrakul, which was good enough as I couldn't find an ascendancy for my life. T1 he fetched mountain to bolt my bird, making me afraid of being burn, but then he played creeping tar pit. Losing that game felt pretty silly as I'm sure he could do almost nothing to stop me.
G2 he nut-draws me with T2 griselbrand, to which I respond with Silence. This may have been a mistake, as the emrakul in G1 should have alerted me to the fact he's not Grishoalbrand and likely doesn't really want to cast much after this, but it ended up with him drawing 21 cards and mistakenly exiling a spirit guide to bolt my noble, so he had to do it again on my upkeep. I couldn't go off on my turn and on his turn he could obviously vengeance an emrakul to finish me off.
R7 I played against Abzan Company and, again, I had trouble finding my combo while he had the T3 infinite life combo. I tried to disrupt him with silence and noxious revival (found a turn later) but he even ended up having company to put the finks back into play right away and scry to redcap. No, this was definitely not my luckiest tournament ever...
G2 I combo him out and don't remember much of it. G3, he mulls to 5 while I keep a good 1 lander with the plan of going fetch, shock, birds. Revival fetch on top, fetch shock wish + noble, T3 combo. However, I'm a big idiot and for some reason draw my card for the turn without playing revival. I don't luck out with a land and play anticipate into land + dork instead, trying to make up for lost time. He builds his board (drawing insanely well after going t1 bird and probing him with only land and finks in hand) and I wish for ascendancy + play caryatid. Then I make a major mistake in blocking a witness with caryatid when he has enough open mana/creatures to chord for 3, which he obviously drew and uses to wreck me with pontiff. Wow. I was a) insanely stupid and b) insanely unlucky in 1 game. Well, that's how you lose.
R8 I played against UW Eldrazi. G1 I combo him out as he didn't do all that much, the details are a bit fuzzy. G2 he's quick enough to put some pressure on and I have to try to combo with only 1 dork (think he went gut shot + dismember this game) and ideas unbound as my last card. So I draw 3 from unbound without being able to loot (only mill, which I do), but I draw into land land wisp and the wisp loots and draws into more dead stuff, so I fizzle and die. Did I mention luck was not on my side this tournament?
G3 he plays temple, I play bird. He plays vesuva copying temple and I have the option of either casting ascendancy, or caryatid. I mistakenly play caryatid, playing around disenchant, and get punished hard by him obviously having the much more likely thought-knot seer which takes my ascendancy. I never find another and die. I still don't understand why I talked myself into playing around white source + disenchant over thought-knot seer. Possibly some remnants of tilt from last round + it already being very late as the tournament was insanely slow kept me from thinking straight. Either way, my tournament was over.
R9 I got a bye from a no show.
I was running quite hot with the deck and to have it fall apart so horribly precisely during this GP was pretty tough to swallow. My matchups weren't great, but not necessarily horrible either (apart from Jund, of course) so with tight play I could have easily gone 7-2. Even though the meta was much more hostile than I expected, the deck still felt pretty good. Me not being able to find ascendancy would definitely not have been helped by not playing Anticipate so I still like that. The manamorphose I played was fine and never spectacular.
R1 I played against UW Eldrazi and the fun started right away with a mull to 5, keeping a no-lander on the play (2 probes) while he also mulled to 5. The hand wasn't bad, except for lack of land, so I thought I'd keep on 5. I probe him to see Urborg, eye, path and 2 TKS. After 2 probes I still have no land and pass. He plays eye and I find another probe, but no land, and see that he drew flooded strand. He plays urborg and casts TKS to which I scoop as I still have no land and didn't cast anything other than those 3 probes. While sideboarding I realize that he couldn't even cast the TKS as he didn't have colorless, which earns him a warning but didn't really change much. All he could actually cast with that hand was path, but there's no way I can come back from this so I rather not show him what I'm playing.
G2 he starts with leyline of sanctity as he puts me on Storm, which is not unreasonable for him to think after what he saw, except that leyline does nothing against me, of course. Well, it does stop probe from targeting him so that earns me a warning. Fortunately I can also target myself (and I don't even have to reveal, it's look!) so I combo him out easily anyway because he clearly kept a poor hand that banked hard on leyline being good.
G3 he's stuck on eye + plains which casts him only mimics, endless ones and displacers. My draw is not particularly insane so when I finally probe him to test the waters I see he has an insane hand (2 TKS, smasher and disenchant), but can't actually cast any of it, so I go for it (turn 3) as I'm in very bad shape if he hits colorless and probably have to chump to survive his next attack anyway. I get there easily, as far as I remember.
R2 I'm paired against a relatively new player (never seen him in that scene before) who plays a homebrew RW aggro deck. This should be fine, except that I put him on heroic first (played against that the Friday before) and thus don't block with caryatid for fear of pump spells, which may have cost me the game as I take lethal from a bolt the turn before I could finally go off.
G2 is almost as awkward and slow as G1, except that I have only 1 lonely bird as mana dork and he's playing bolts... However, the turn after I fetch ascendancy and he checks what it does, he bolts me rather than my bird and even taps out after that for a flip Gideon, so I combo him out. Lucky.
G3 I think I have an easy t4 kill except that he topdecks land #3 and plays Nevermore, naming my freshly wished ascendancy. At this point I have 4 outs (3 wishes and a boarded decay) and a few turns to find it, but don't and die. Bleh.
R3 against Elves, on the draw, he has a decent hand that vomits a bunch of elves and shaman of the pack into play T3, but I topdeck an ascendancy and combo him out. I was digging hard for it, so even though it was the last possible moment to draw it, it doesn't feel all that lucky.
G2 he mulls to 5, which gives me time to find the combo, which I do with a few turns left before he would kill me. This match makes me think I want Fiery Justice back in my sideboard to make sure I can wreck a boardstate like that to give myself a lot of time.
R4 against burn. Eww.
G1 he mulls to 6 on the play but screws on 1 land the whole game, which makes it an easy win, despite him having a creature T1. Lucky.
G2 I see an opener of stomping ground, ascendancy, cantrips and leyline, which I keep. He goes guide into guide and I bemoan my luck, but he doesn't actually have more going than that when I probe him and see boros charm, searing blaze and land. I find a caryatid, which I use to combo with until I find silence to bring fatestitcher back safely (he has 3 unknowns + blaze in hand and a fetch on the table at the time) and easily combo him out. I forgot Blaze can't actually be cast when I have leyline out, but playing around bolt or helix as long as possible is good anyway. This match felt very lucky, though it also showed the power of leyline and caryatid.
In the top 8 against abzan company, game 1 he assembles his combo on his upkeep T4 or so and scries a card to the top. I'm slightly nervous here because even though I can combo off next turn, if he has any interaction I'm dead. It turns out he scried Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit to the top which he casts, tapping him out except for Melira (chorded on upkeep) and Anafenza. They're arbitrarily large, but can't attack due to summoning sickness. On my turn, I combo him out and after I go ascendancy #2 into #3, he asks me how I plan to win, so I show him the wealth and he scoops. He forgot I can win through infinite life, otherwise he'd have scried his 1 main deck decay to the top..
G2 I race to combo off but the turn before I can he chords for 4 and gets Linvala. I was very mana screwed that game (1 land and 2 mana dorks in play) so I just played ascendancy hoping he had nothing so I could combo off next turn. Sadly, he had far from nothing as after Linvala I wished for an answer (abzan charm), he found Sin Collector to exile it right away. Here, I again wish I had a Fiery Justice in my board. Instead, I try to dig for my Slaughter Pact but don't find it before I die.
G3 his hand is slightly awkward with overgrown tomb and township as his lands, but he also has t1 bird with abrupt decay, witness and fulminator mage in hand. I'm also on a 1 lander, but have plenty of mana dorks. He fulminators my land and I play more dorks, eventually ending up with 2 nobles and 2 caryatids next to a lonely breeding pool. I find a Silence to play around his decay but he sin collectors me, seeing wish, noxious revival and silence, taking the silence.
I wish for an ascendancy and topdeck another ascendancy, but am low on (cheap) cards so I can't combo through his decay. I need to be able to cast both ascendancies in 1 turn or else he can decay, untap, witness back decay and decay again on the next try. He then witnesses back something I don't remember. Here I mess up by thinking I should not EoT revival something to the top and instead increase my handsize so I can loot profitably. However, in my chosen line, where I plan to play ascendancy, revival, get decayed, play new ascendancy, I need to hit a 1 mana spell in either the loot or my draw step, but I do neither and get my 2nd ascendancy decayed because he ends up having another witness. If I put Ideas Unbound back on top EoT and went ascendancy into ideas unbound, I get a draw 3 to find a 1 mana spell and then have 2 spares to loot away. My draws after that punt were lands and dorks, if I remember correctly, so I wouldn't have made it anyway, but that line was strictly better than what I did.
After the tournament I discuss the tournament and our decks over dinner with a friend and at some point I tell my friend that I never actually fetched Temple Garden in any game in the past tournaments, preferring to go for hallowed fountain. This prompts him to say I should cut it and that makes a lot of sense as it's the one dual I can't fetch with Scalding Tarn and if I never fetched it, I apparently also don't need the fetch target. Scalding tarn is then the best option because it increases the chances of hitting the right land because a 1-lander with tarn is infinitely better than one with non-breeding pool-dual or basic. Similarly, I never wish for flesh//blood except for killing slightly faster so it seems rather redundant. Abzan charm I do wish for quite a bit as 2nd draw 2 because sometimes you just draw tons of lands, dorks and wishes. Abzan charm is almost the perfect flexible wish target, the only downside being it costing black mana, which can be an issue when linvala is on the battlefield. This leads to the conclusion that I want to swap temple garden for scalding tarn and flesh blood for fiery justice, so I made those changes.
R1 wasn't very exciting. His draws were not particularly insane and I combo off T3 in 2 games. He did get me fairly low so I can imagine this not being a great matchup necessarily.
R2 against Elves I combo off T4 and 3. Game 1 was fairly interesting because he vomitted out a lot of elves but isn't really threatening lethal yet (I'm at 16 when he untaps). My draw is not great and I end up in ithe situation of having Pact, wish and loot fodder with 3 land and 3 mana dorks. I wish for ascendancy and play it, but don't try to combo because I need to exactly loot into something or fizzle right away. If I wait, I can pump my dorks and eat some elves, hope to loot/draw into something and then combo off. He attacks with everything and I pact his Sentinel, untapping my team and blocking 2 mana elves and a 2-power elite. This makes me go down to 11, after which he plays shaman of the pack, dropping me to 5. I looted into an ideas unbound so I untap and combo him out.
R3 against Merfolk was a bit weird. G1 I go off T4 through a dismember because of having Caryatids and finding silence before unearthing fatestitcher, though I could also have done without it, probably. He has cursecatcher but because I'm going off fairly late, I can always keep up enough mana to never get bricked by that.
G2, however, was fairly intense. I mull to 6 with no land, but with cantrips, ascendancy, bird and 2 probes, he mulls to 5. He plays land, I play probe #1 and see dismember, remand, lord of atlantis and island. I play probe #2 and hit gemstone mine. I don't want to allow him to use his mana so I cast a cantrip instead of bird, which finds me another bird and I scry a misty to the top. He plays lord and passes. I play misty, fetch breeding pool and play another cantrip. He untaps, plays land 3 and another lord, then passes. I find another bird, which I play with pool and pass after playing tapped stomping ground. At this point I have an abrupt decay in hand (sided in in case of chalice) and he EoT vapor snags my non-summoning sick birds, so I respond by tapping it and mine to decay a lord so I don't take 6 unblockable each turn. He untaps, dismembers my remaining bird and passes with 2 mana open. I draw a caryatid, which I want to resolve most. I bait him with birds but he allows it, after which I play the caryatid anyway, and he also lets it resolve. Now I can block his lord. I play another caryatid which he also allows and next turn, with 6 mana in play, I play Silence (remand), ascendancy, ideas unbound and combo him out. From how he played it was obvious he didn't have anything after the remand and I also was dead to any top deck that gives islandwalk to his lord so it didn't seem safe to wait. He could have easily slowed me down sufficiently to win (I ended the game at 3) by simply using his remand somewhere earlier but his fear of the big combo piece killed him. Somewhere in that game he actually allowed me to cast bird into bird, using up my gemstone mine, but I'm unsure where this fits in the time line. I do know I was down to 1 land (breeding pool) at some point due to this.
R4 against UW eldrazi, I lose g1 due to keeping a hand with only a few land and cantrips on the draw. His draw with eye mimic (he had this all 3 games) into beaters was too fast for my slow draw without mana dork. I know it seems obvious that it's pretty much impossible to keep a hand without some kind of mana dork, but this is testing, so I wanted to test.
G2 I win fairly easily despite him gut shotting 1 of my birds t2. Would have been easy t3 kill without it, but he wasn't fast enough to punish me.
G3 he plays in a way that represents disenchant, which he ends up having. Still, his board doesn't allow me to wait another turn so I go for it T3 with 2 dorks by wishing for and casting ascendancy into probe for 2 life, to which he responds with disenchant, to which I respond with pact on his biggest eldrazi (displacer). I make 4 mana, loot into another ascendancy, discarding ideas unbound (last other card in hand sleight) and go off again. I quickly find ideas unbound, only having to sweat it for 2 cantrips and easily kill him from there.
So, when you run well this deck is fairly unbeatable ;). When you don't, it's still very likely to win against decks with slower combos and/or little interaction. Only when under severe pressure does interaction really hurt and then really only when it takes out one of the least redundant pieces (ascendancy). This is also why this is not a playable deck in a meta with a significant presence of BGx, but fortunately this is not the case at the moment :).
@Velthov
A few things:
Play fewer city of brass. I played 4 in Madrid 2014 and it hurts way too much for such a fast deck. It's much better having gemstone mine because you're supposed to have won before they run out, but it's very possible to die before you win when you have cities instead. One reason why I like my mana base so much is because you don't necessarily have to kill yourself each time.
Misty rainforest is the best fetch, but I guess that's obvious.
Forest is bad. It doesn't cast ascendancy and it doesn't cast cantrips. Sure, it casts mana dork, but those don't find you your missing pieces, blue spells do. If you're worried about blood moon, island does almost the same thing because it requires only 1 mana dork to still be able to cast ascendancy and the cantrips you can cast with it will help you get there faster.
I recommend the full 4 caryatid because they don't cost 1 (chalice), have hexproof and can block small things the turn you play it. Because of win cons from the side, them having defender is not relevant. Every damage you can save matters (provided there's no risk of caryatid dying due to pump) as it can be the difference between dying now or next turn.
Wisps are played to get from 1 to 2 mana when comboing with 1 dork. It doesn't really make sense to play 3 of those with 8 1-mana dorks and 4 fatestitcher.
4 Ideas Unbound. No, really. You have no main deck way of increasing your hand size, which is absolutely vital to succesful comboing (not to mention the odds of hitting cantrips when drawing 3). In magical christmas land, you go off T2/3 every time with plenty of cards to spare for profitable looting, but it frequently happens you're constricted and need to be able to loot chaff away while keeping cantrips. As you can read in the report(s) above, casting ideas unbound is the win con from which it becomes trivial to win. This deck used to be insane with treasure cruise because it allowed you to do it for 1 mana. Even when played pre-combo, it's fine to sculpt your hand or dig for something you really need right now.
Why 2 flesh//blood in the side? In which situation do you see yourself able to wish for 2 of them, but not be able to make the first 1 lethal?
Why izzet staticaster? What problem does this solve or what strategy is completely hosed by this?
Why 2 wear//tear?
Meddling mage I'm not so sure about either. What strategy does it completely hose that it's worth it to wish for and cast it? The only one that really comes to mind is Ad Nauseam, where they don't have a reasonable way to get rid of it and naming Ad nauseam surely stops them from winning, but that seems rather fringe, unless it's big in your meta of course.
I'm not a big fan of spellskite in this deck. I think the anti-synergy is too big and it's too expensive. Silence has more applications, is cheaper, stops multiple answers at the same time and triggers ascendancy.
Swan song could be good. I'm actually contemplating whether I should just concede the matchup to burn and BGx as I'm unlikely to see them and shore up my matchup against other combo decks while also being good against commonly played answers and having splash applications against blood moon and eidolons.
I'd like to highlight some interesting situations:
R1G1 against UR Eldrazi I'm on the play and we both mull to 6. I open with probe and serum visions and leave a caryatid on top after seeing a chalice and multiple dismembers. He goes T2 chalice for 1. I play Ascendancy (tapped out) and miss my land drop. He plays a matter reshaper I had seen with probe and passes. I untap with 2 land, ascendancy and caryatid in play, some cantrips, ideas unbound and wish in hand. I can go wish into decay and depending on what I loot into, I could try to continue comboing. I do this and as I'm looting, I find a silence and a 0 mana spell. This allows me to first turn off his dismembers and build mana for ideas unbound. This chains me into multiple free spells for more ideas unbound and eventually I hit a fatestitcher which I use to easily finish him off. Who cares about chalice ;).
R2 was practically a bye, but I did have some fun (because of being provoked, I swear) by comboing out to the fullest extent possible and killing by milling him out with villainous wealth and casting all his stuff. It at least yielded a nice photo with my very impressive board after doing that ;).
R3G1 we both mull to 6 and he scries to the bottom. Draws for his turn, expresses happiness about his draw and plays an elf, indicating he didn't actually have a creature before this draw. I build my board and he puts rancor on elf + might to put me on 7 poison, threatening 3 more from the elf next turn. Here I decide to not risk him having anything to make blocking impossible or not enough, so I wish for Decay instead of ascendancy and kill his elf. He doesn't find another creature and I combo him out 2 or so turns later.
R4G2 I'm on the draw and very constraint on mana. I mulled to a no-lander with 2 probes and birds that finds a gemstone cavern after draw + 1 probe. My opponent misplays t1 by fetching forest rather than playing grove to play his stirrings (finding TKS), which means he can't play t2 matter reshaper to put a clock on me. Then he plays TKS t3 and sees silence, probe, 2 wish and maybe something else irrelevant. Instead of taking probe to make it impossible to combo off without topdecking land in the next 2 turns (1 counter left on cavern) he takes my uncastable silence. I wish for ascendancy, he slams me with smasher + TKS which only puts me to 5 or so. I don't topdeck land but can use the probe to start comboing with caryatid and bird in play, so I easily combo him out.
The deck felt as great as I thought it would and I'm anxiously looking forward to GP Bologna, hoping The Enemy (BGx) doesn't find a solution to the eldrazis before then. It's a little disconcerting to see Jund and Death cloud in the top 8 of a fairly big event in russia (see MTGtop8.com), but they're probably not even close to as prevalent as before Oath came out. Tonight there's another 4-round FNM, hoping to crush all opposition again ;).
I'd cut the faithless looting because the combo really dislikes going down on cards and your interaction with the gy is not big either. You're already playing bolts, gut shots and izzet charms that also don't cantrip. If you cut thought scour and visions, you definitely don't want faithless looting anymore. I'd play 4 sleight and 2 ideas unbound instead of scour and visions and simply cut the looting to go down to 60 cards. Even without ascendancy, ideas is fine to cast as many spells as possible for YP/Mentor and then dump useless land at eot (or kill them). Because you rely quite a bit on fatestitcher to combo, I'd keep the scours.
This version of JAC has way fewer issues with blood moon than the wish version, so I'd skip the manamorphose. I'm not sure I agree with no path to exile, though. It kills big things that set a real clock on you, which bolt doesn't. You're not as super fast as the wish version with mana dorks, so if you can't answer a T2 TKS, Goyf or whatever else with 4+ toughness, you're under a lot of pressure. I'd probably cut the think twice, an izzet charm and a gut shot for path, or at least 2 of those 3.
I'd board in Abrupt Decay against Chalice of the Void, not Wear//Tear. If they put it on 2, you can't cast wear//tear to kill it, nor wish for Decay, and you definitely also need to get rid of chalice on 2 for Ideas Unbound, Wish, Caryatid and Anticipate, etc, if they manage to drop it before you can go off.
1 Jeskai Ascendancy
1 Scarscale Ritual
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Abzan Charm
1 Wear // Tear
1 Flesh // Blood
1 Villainous Wealth
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
1 Fracturing Gust
1 Guttural Response
1 Silence
4 Leyline of Sanctity
To explain these choices:
- Leyline is key against BGx and burn. Unfortunately they already board in enchantment removal anyway, but the potential to turn off their hand is too good because without it, you're in quite some trouble. I've tried other strategies as well (like Young Pyromancer) but these don't really cover the required bases. You can't board too much with this deck, so I prefer to have mostly wish targets and few others, unless they are very high impact, such as leyline.
- 1 Silence. When Silence is good, it's great, so I like having access to at least 1 more.
- Jeskai Ascendancy goes without saying.
- Scarscale Ritual is similarly uncuttable. Turning the first (remaining) wish into a draw 2 for 2 is very important to keep the combo going.
- Abrupt Decay. Best cheap general answer to many problematic permanents, such as Eidolon of Rhetoric, Chalice of the Void, cards that prevent certain cards from being cast such as Meddling Mage or Nevermore
- Wear // Tear. Gets rid of many problematic things for very cheap and gives a 2nd answer next to decay. Very useful to be able to board in the decay and still have wear // tear to wish for against eidolon (revel) or chalice. I only board in the decay when the problem is a Big problem, such as Chalice or eidolon of the great revel. In the first case because a chalice on 2 would turn off all 2 drops forever and the 2nd because I want an option to deal with eidolon without having to tutor for it. Decay then makes the best choice to board in because it's cheaper to wish for wear // tear and thus more likely you can play it early enough.
- Flesh // Blood. Allows (easily) winning without combat. This is relevant when you can't attack or when you need to tap the opponent out in the first main phase, for example when they have Cryptic Command or something else that won't really stop you from comboing but does stop you from swinging for the win. To be honest, I've not have this card in my sideboard for a while before because not being able to win through damage when you run fatestitchers is pretty unlikely as are the other cornercases in which you can't attack for the win. However, because the deck only relies on the gy due to fatestitcher and it's a relevant option to side those out to dodge all hate they might board in (in my experience people go nuts against you with that) you can get in the situation where you have to combo with only caryatid which can't attack.
- Sigarda. Sigarda is basically the backup plan when ascendancy fails. This may happen for 2 reasons, 1) because ascendancy gets Surgical Extractioned and 2) because BGx has ripped your hand and board to shreds, making it extremely unlikely to combo. This then makes it possible to topdeck a wish and get sigarda + cast her and BGx is quite cold to it, provided they aren't about to kill you with multiple creatures. Sigarda has been quite good for me in multiple cases, also against other decks.
- Fracturing Gust. With all these mana dorks, it's not unreasonable to wish for and cast this fairly early, after which affinity has a pretty hard time winning the race and also bogles can pack it in. Due to it being a single wish target, it'll never clutter up your hand and when it works, it's very high impact and probably game winning.
- Abzan Charm. Some cmc 4+ creatures are quite problematic, main offender being Linvala, Keeper of Silence. I used to run Fiery Justice as this would kill linvala even through a spellskite, but I like charm also being a draw 2 while being unable to be redirected to a spellskite (the large majority of the time, of course). If you play against gifts and they name blue on Iona, Shield of Emeria, thinking you can't combo like that, you also get to charm their iona..
- Villainous Wealth. As mentioned already above, this card allows you to win through problems such as an opponent with infinite life or Deflecting palm. You could work around palm by tapping them out and using flesh/blood on whatever creature they didn't choose, but it's nice to have the option. Depending on your life total, it's probably safest to not let them untap, so I'd always go for the kill on my own turn with flesh/blood, if able.
- Guttural Response. Tutorable cheap counter-counterspell. Because our deck is so fast, it's usually enough to stop 1 answer and that makes this a tutorable silence.
I'm also considering Meddling Mage and Dreadbore. Meddling Mage is good against non-interactive combo (except the mirror, hehe) such as storm and ad nauseam, but probably not against much else. Dreadbore could be a cheap way to kill problematic creatures and planeswalkers that aren't covered by abrupt decay/charm, but nothing really comes to mind.
Swan Song would also be a nice option to stop blood moon and eidolon (and some tricks while comboing), but there's no space for it at the moment.
Lastly, I also switched the mana base around a bit. I liked having all fetches be able to fetch all duals, but I didn't like not all fetches being able to get the island. I can imagine your mana base gives you perfect mana every time, Arkaedian, but at what cost? Being able to fetch basic island has saved my ass on numerous occasions because 2 life is a lot in a deck that easily deals 10 dmg to itself. Also, in this meta with a million ghost quarters (and path), not running a basic seems very dubious to me. I replaced the 3 wooded foothills with 1 hallowed fountain and 2 scalding tarns to make sure all fetches still fetch white mana (and also to have a 2nd dual that makes white due to the ghost quarters in the meta). This means 2 lands don't cast a turn 1 bird/noble, but unless that's the only land I have, that shouldn't be too much of a problem. Hallowed fountain also makes it possible to fix all color in 2 lands with stomping ground, which is nice.
Nice record, Arkaidian. How did those matches play out? I suppose CoCo didn't combo against you? How about blood moon from blue moon? And spreading seas perhaps?
You're in for a rude awakening when you test against burn and BGx ;).