I play this deck with eight mainboard discard spells (usually Duress and IoK) as well as Coalition Relic on top of the usual Pentad, Lotus Bloom. A miser's Orzhov Signet has helped at times, as well! These inclusions leave you much less susceptible to fringe strategies like Blood Moon and Ghost Quarter that utterly wreck you.
The largest drawback is you rarely race a fast aggro deck, but you no longer punt to faster assembly-required decks like Tron and Living End. 4 Angel's Grace, 3 Unlife is enough redundancy to spare the slots for dig, and the Pact of Negation/Mindbreak mess is avoided entirely in favor of the aforementioned disruption package.
Try it!
...and stop playing Gigadrowse. If you want to hose control, just play Early Frost. It Time Walks other opposition as a bonus!
It's kind of humiliating for you guys to sit here and pause on how good Thoughtseize is, and what a blowout Stormbreath Dragon are. Nobody has played with, or against the upcoming format.
-No Dragon in standard (nor the upcoming standard) is better than Blood Baron, and I'd certainly question anyone playing it over Obzedat or even Sire of Insanity.
-Thoughtseize is a card that does absolutely nothing when you're winning, and absolutely nothing if you're losing. It's a pro-active save card for a deck that doesn't need it.
Why are people so committed to ruining the core of a good deck, ensuring that it never sees play at top tables? Dega Midrange, Dega Control, and even Dega Aggro could be exceptional decks if you stop crushing them in the deck-building stage.
It's like you're all struggling, and flailing your arms while praying for Flores or some other overrated pro to build your decks for you. COME ON, PEOPLE!
LD aside: Black Vise is an omnipotent "damned if you do" style of card that quickly oppresses developed formats. The majority of decks that find success do so by holding more cards of value than their opponents. Black Vise tells those decks that they're no longer coming out on top for gripping a full package of bombs in-hand, and for what... one colorless mana!? Let it be.
I firmly believe that both Gush and Mind's Desire could easily come off, and that one card has made this possible (if not probable).
The printing of Flusterstorm single-handedly diffused a gigantic combo format, and forced combo players into more resilient decks like SNT and Elves. While nobody wants to remember how important ANT and High Tide were to Legacy two years ago, the printing of a single permission spell set those archetypes back YEARS.
Even then, Gush is a one-shot enabler for a deck that could play several other spells in its place to begin with. I'd happily let Gush back into the format if it means Frantic Search is wiped clean from the game's history.
Fill in from there! Temporal Mastery in exile + 1 Academy Ruins + 1 Mirror of Fate = infinite turns minus card draw for 7 mana. Slightly more efficient than the more common (but included) Mindslaver combo. You're weak to graveyard removal, Pithing Needle, a wealth of permission, and mill (and aggro, but we aren't accounting for that in a Mirror of Fate deck - Neato).
Temporal Mastery, Think Twice, and Snapcaster give you fuel to actually run off of from your first Mirror, then you Mirror back your other Mirror and string them together to get whatever you need.
I just don't understand people's urge to complain about "color" use. Are you that tied to your blue mana symbol deckbox, and your shimmery blue kmc sleeves?
Competitive players don't whine about colors. They play the best cards available to them for the strategy they're in. If those cards aren't blue at the moment, shrug and move along to red.
If you aren't a competitive player, you have no room to complain about how crap something is.
Spirit Stompy with Tallowisp and Geist could absolutely support it.
Tallowisp could fetch enough variation in cmc to make Disrupting Shoal a completely viable hard counter, and Shoal itself is fine countering a Deathrite for 3 anyway.
I play it as a 1-of in a deck that draws its entire library off a Boseiju'd Ad Nauseam. It backs up my Lightning Storm with the ability to exile Sleight of Hand, Peer Through Depths, a singleton Forbidden Alchemy, or Mystical Teachings to counter any disruption between 1-4 mana.
I also play Snapback, which is sadly much more relevant given the situation.
The largest drawback is you rarely race a fast aggro deck, but you no longer punt to faster assembly-required decks like Tron and Living End. 4 Angel's Grace, 3 Unlife is enough redundancy to spare the slots for dig, and the Pact of Negation/Mindbreak mess is avoided entirely in favor of the aforementioned disruption package.
Try it!
...and stop playing Gigadrowse. If you want to hose control, just play Early Frost. It Time Walks other opposition as a bonus!
They even wipe and conform stuff.
You guys are forever doomed to posting in Developing Competitive thanks to your own moronic bs. Enjoy it.
-No Dragon in standard (nor the upcoming standard) is better than Blood Baron, and I'd certainly question anyone playing it over Obzedat or even Sire of Insanity.
-Thoughtseize is a card that does absolutely nothing when you're winning, and absolutely nothing if you're losing. It's a pro-active save card for a deck that doesn't need it.
Why are people so committed to ruining the core of a good deck, ensuring that it never sees play at top tables? Dega Midrange, Dega Control, and even Dega Aggro could be exceptional decks if you stop crushing them in the deck-building stage.
It's like you're all struggling, and flailing your arms while praying for Flores or some other overrated pro to build your decks for you. COME ON, PEOPLE!
Stop being lame, and love it already!!!
I firmly believe that both Gush and Mind's Desire could easily come off, and that one card has made this possible (if not probable).
The printing of Flusterstorm single-handedly diffused a gigantic combo format, and forced combo players into more resilient decks like SNT and Elves. While nobody wants to remember how important ANT and High Tide were to Legacy two years ago, the printing of a single permission spell set those archetypes back YEARS.
Even then, Gush is a one-shot enabler for a deck that could play several other spells in its place to begin with. I'd happily let Gush back into the format if it means Frantic Search is wiped clean from the game's history.
7 cards that when strung together on consecutive turns, beat anything in the game
2 Mirror of Fate
3 Temporal Mastery
4 Think Twice
Fill in from there! Temporal Mastery in exile + 1 Academy Ruins + 1 Mirror of Fate = infinite turns minus card draw for 7 mana. Slightly more efficient than the more common (but included) Mindslaver combo. You're weak to graveyard removal, Pithing Needle, a wealth of permission, and mill (and aggro, but we aren't accounting for that in a Mirror of Fate deck - Neato).
Temporal Mastery, Think Twice, and Snapcaster give you fuel to actually run off of from your first Mirror, then you Mirror back your other Mirror and string them together to get whatever you need.
...and no. Do not play mana dorks. Play Cackler, Experiment One, Burning-Tree, Gore-House, Hellhole, Splatter Thug/Mangler, then Exava, War Chant.
Mana dorks are for decks that need them.
Experiment One, Rakdos Cackler
Gore-House Chainwalker, Lotleth Troll, Searing Spear
Hellhole Flailer, Dreg Mauler, Domri Rade
Exava, Savageborn Hydra
Kalonian Hydra
Bonfire of the Damned
is viable.
Competitive players don't whine about colors. They play the best cards available to them for the strategy they're in. If those cards aren't blue at the moment, shrug and move along to red.
If you aren't a competitive player, you have no room to complain about how crap something is.
Tallowisp could fetch enough variation in cmc to make Disrupting Shoal a completely viable hard counter, and Shoal itself is fine countering a Deathrite for 3 anyway.
I also play Snapback, which is sadly much more relevant given the situation.