lancelot123, I played 10 games with your list and recorded the turn that I goldfished and the amount of life I had left after comboing.
Here's the scores:
1. Turn 6, 12 Life
2. Turn 5, 16 Life
3. Turn 10, 14 Life
4. Turn 4, 12 Life
5. Turn 3, 14 Life
6. Turn 3, 14 Life
7. Turn 4, 14 Life
8. Turn 4, 12 Life
9. Turn 4, 14 Life
10. Epic Fail... didn't even finish
The first three games were rough because I had to mulligan and was not getting good hands. Game three was particularly tough because I mulligan'd down to 5 and still couldn't get a decent hand. The next six games, I had decent to good hands and the deck performed very consistently. The final game I drew absolutely dump hands, not ever seeing Fluctuator and with my last two hands of five and four, not even drawing a land. In that case, I should have kept one of my earlier hands and just hoped to draw into a Fluctuator.
I didn't goldfish my list today because I've done it already in the past. I don't have any numbers but I think it might be just a pinch more consistent than your list, lancelot123, but only slightly so. And that's because Caldera gives me one more cycler in a pinch.
Soldier, I like the idea behind your list but I couldn't get it to work. I kept walling up with non-cyclers I couldn't get rid of and wasn't ready to combo off until turn 6 or after, most games. Maybe I was just having bad luck with it. Either way, I like the ideas incorporated into your list and I'm wondering if it could be successfully blended with one of the more traditional lists.
bganns, your list is kind of going in the direction I think we want to go but I also don't understand some of your choices. Even with Restless Dreams, I'm not sure why you want to run so many Drain Lifes and Twilight's Calls. To me, that just seems to reduce consistency. I also feel like I'm missing something but I don't understand why you are running Noxious Revival and why you are running Scrubland. I'd love to hear your explanation for those!
Soldier, Restless Dreams is a very interesting card. Do you still have a list for your Fluctuator deck that ran this?
lancelot123, if you don't mind, I'd love to put your deck up on tappedout.net briefly (all credits to you for the list, of course) to goldfish it a few times. I'd like to see how often it goes off turn two and three. I think I'm also really warming up to Gitaxian Probe too. The more I think about it, the more I like that you are running it as a 2-of.
In fact, I'm also wondering if it wouldn't be better to swap the Spell Pierce out for something like Cabal Therapy or Duress for the post board games. Those would also have great synergy with Gitaxian Probe.
Tarkus, I do have to agree that Fluctuator combo decks are traditionally some of the least interactive decks ever built. You literally ignore your opponent and go solitaire by shifting through your cards. However, that's what I think is exciting about trying to build a sideboard that lets Fluctuator get a lot more interactive in the second and third games. It's not something your opponent's expect.
EDIT: I'm also wondering about the possibility of using something like Complicate. I wouldn't mind using it instead of Miscalculation. The only problem is, that Complicate definitely would not work for the first game and the SB already seems crammed for space (though still very open for changes). Still something to consider.
Exsanguinate is a great card and I run it in my more classic Fluctuator combo list. Here's the problem with it that I see, though. First, it adds another non-cycling card to the list. This might be okay if it contributed greatly to the deck but I don't think it's necessary actually.
In general, I think of adding a second kill card to this deck as protection. However, adding Exsanguinate does not require the opponent to use two counters. A smart player will take a quick look at that Songs of the Damned you dropped and how much mana it's going to net you and counter that instead. Now you're stuck with an Exsanguinate that is useless and a Haunting Misery which is probably going to require you to drop at least one more land before being able to be hard cast.
I run Haunting Misery over Exsanguinate because it is cheaper. Dealing 20 damage with Haunting Misery requires 20 creatures in your grave but dealing 20 with Exsanguinate requires 22 creatures in your grave. Depending on how your deck is stacked, this could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
That said, I think Caldera and Autumn's Veil offer the best protection I can think of. Caldera is a land so it can't be countered (except for Stifle or something) and then the mana it produces is used to play Autumn's Veil before I ever drop Lotus Petal or Songs of the Damned or any of my combo pieces. This forces my opponent to have an answer for both Autumn's Veil and the combo. It's not fool proof but it's the best I've come across for this.
I also want to point out that I am running only 8 non-cycling lands in my list, not 14. Post sideboard is when I run 14 non-cyclers but at that point the deck is no longer meant to be played like a combo deck. Instead, I play it more like aggro control. I start hard casting some of my creatures, cycling cards to get more creatures and counter spells as well as Songs' and Twilight's Calls. True. You do "wall" up more easily. There's no way you are going to cycle through your whole deck. But you don't need to because second and third game, you play slower and more carefully. When you get the chance, you can drop Twilight's Call for one mana, effectively, to bring back a chunk of creatures from your graveyard. That's when you try to swing the game.
I guess I should have been more clear about how to play each and when to use your sideboard. Against aggro or fast combo, you want to stay with the combo list so you can race them. Against aggro control, control or a deck that's sided hate in against you, you want to use your sideboard to bring some control into the game on your side. At this point, you are just trying to hold off and win over the long haul.
At least, that's how I see it being played. Your thoughts?
Edit: I forgot to comment on a few things that I wanted to. I really like the idea of using Elvish Spirit Guide. It's still fairly difficult to counter because it requires something like Stifle (which I think is surprisingly underplayed) to counter it and it offers the possibility of a second-turn win. However, while Caldera does slow your clock down to turn three, I really like the level of consistency it adds to the deck. It gives you another cycling card so it's almost like you are running a deck with only 7 non-cyclers and this decreases the chance of getting "walled" up.
I would not recommend Gitaxian Probe for this deck. This deck needs to run a high level of creatures to increase consistency. The fewer cycling creatures you run, the less likely it will be for you to get enough creatures into the grave when you want to combo. I think Street Wraith is better and I run it in my classic Fluctuator list. Cards like Gitaxian Probe and Street Wraith are really only helpful when you get a bad hand, though. They increase your chances of drawing into a Fluctuator. The downside is that they really hurt. Running four means there is a very high chance that you will be taking 8 damage when you cycle through your deck.
Okay. Before I dive into this idea that I have, I'm going to post a little disclaimer because I can already foresee certain comments being posted if I don't.
Disclaimer: This idea is based off of a combo deck that uses Fluctuator. It's nothing new and it's a combo deck that's been looked at in the past and found to be too fragile for any serious tournament play. However, I've been intrigued by the idea behind the deck and it's got the gears in my brain turning. I thought, perhaps, with new cards to choose from today (as opposed to the original lists that came out years ago), maybe something fun and decently competitive could be built from the original idea.
So. Before anyone posts anything, I know there are better options in terms of choosing competitive decks to play in legacy. This isn't the best choice of a deck if you want to go hardcore in Legacy tournaments but this isn't a casual thread either. This is about building a deck that is competitive enough to not get completely stomped in local tournaments where people do play good decks (but still not probably as good as the stuff played in a Starcity Legacy Open). It's also about the fun of building and playing a deck that's just a little bit different from what everyone else is playing.
Here's how the deck works. For the first game, you try to win ASAP by comboing out on turn 3 or so. This is achieved by dropping two lands and then a Fluctuator and cycling all of your cards away for free until you inevitably run into the other non-cycling cards in your deck which are the remaining Fluctuators, Songs of the Damned, Lotus Petal, Autumn's Veil, Haunting Misery and Darigaaz's Caldera. Once you have those, you can begin going off.
Ideally, on your third turn, drop Caldera, returning a cycling land to your hand (which you can then cycle if need be). Tap Caldera for green and play Autumn's Veil. That's your combo protection. Your hope is that it forces your opponent to have at least two counterspells to stop your combo. Then drop Lotus Petal, cracking it for black to play Songs of the Damned (or Dark Ritual if you prefer to run that instead) to play Haunting Misery for the win.
Because the deck runs 28 creatures, you're likely to have enough creatures in your graveyard to make it an instant win. Surprise! This is not a deck that's seen often and my bet is that this deck can sneak some 1st game wins in simply because your opponents have no idea what you are doing. That's the beauty of it.
But what about second and third game? The cat's out of the bag and this ship's bound to sink once your opponents side in all of their hate. That's why this combo has never been competitive. This means we have to do something serious in terms of sideboarding for the second and third games. My proposition is to run a transformative sideboard like the one above so that the deck then looks like the following, post-sideboard.
Now the deck is tuned so you can play it like a completely different animal. You still want to resolve a Fluctuator if you can but after that, you are playing a different game.
Cycle creatures when you can and want to or even play them as chump blockers. When you need to you can cycle cards away and have a fairly decent chance at running into one of the Spell Pierce. In fact, before dropping your combo piece, you'll probably have run into at least one or two Spell Pierce or Miscalculation. Whenever you are ready, you can drop a Songs of the Damned and play Twilight's Call to return your creatures from the grave to the battlefield. The awesome thing about this is that you only need six creatures in your grave to pull off. But that's still six creatures you drop onto the field! Rinse and repeat as necessary until you win.
Dromar's Cavern helps keep you from getting colored screwed while also letting you bounce a cycling land back to your hand. One fun thing I like to do is tap my cycling land for mana, drop a Cavern and cycle. Then, if I run into a card like Scion of Darkness, I have one mana floating to cycle him with and a free Cavern to tap for black to drop my Songs and Twilight's Call.
It's still fairly weak to hate, especially grave hate or Wasteland or even simply having Fluctuator countered but it's not quite as fragile as the straight up combo list.
So that's the gist of my idea. It could use some fine tuning no doubt. I just wanted the challenge of building something different and seeing if it could become good enough for small tournament play.
I'd love suggestions! Cost is not an issue so suggest whatever. I'm also not opposed to completely different ideas for design. I'm really just wanting to explore different ways that Fluctuator can be successfully used in a deck.
Test of Endurance is fun because it goes with the life gaining combo, but it's definitely not better than Brain Freeze, at least IMHO. Here's why.
1. True. If you've gained infinite life, you hope to have enough time in the game to get mana and play whatever you want, but the fact is that Brain Freeze's mana cost is much more reasonable and that's just a good thing.
2. It's also harder to counter because it's a 'Storm' card. This means that stuff like FoW isn't going to be able to stop it. They can only counter one instance of the spell but you can go infinite with the storm count.
Finn, thanks for your comment. I played in a tournament today and time was not an issue for me, thankfully. Most players, once they saw how it worked, were okay with letting me "speed" play through the combo anyways.
As far as that goes, I went 2-2 before having to drop out because my buddy who rode with me had to be somewhere. Had a good chance of placing fourth out of twelve, actually. But yeah, I still think that's pretty fair, especially since I'm missing half the cards I actually want in my list and had throw some other stuff in in place of it. The decks I played against were Suicide Black, some sort of white weenie deck I think, Zoo and a weird artifact combo deck that I first thought was Affinity.
Nobody had ever seen anything like The Four Horsmen though, so that was a lot of fun. They didn't know how to play against it, what to sideboard in or when to crack grave hate and stuff. Everyone was very interested in the deck, that's for sure.
I have a question, though. I've been looking at it and thinking about it and it seems like our opponents are able to crack Swords on our Narcomoeba before we can get off Cabal Therapy because Cabal is a sorcery, not an instant. Because it's a sorcery it seems like the Narco coming into play is going to have to resolve and priority would be passed before you could cast Cabal Therapy at sorcery speed. Am I mistaken?
Hey all! I've considered posting a comment on the Four Horsemen but have so far just been lurking. But no longer. When I first stumbled across this thread in its infancy, I found it because I was looking for decks that use Mesmeric Orb as, for the past five months, I've been working on my own, though budget, Mesmeric Orb deck called Orb Control.
Long story short, I found Finn's combo with Orb and Basalt to be incredibly awesome so I adopted that combo and went on my merry way working on my deck. Well, I came back to the Four Horsemen a week or so ago and have read through this entire thread. This is an absolutely awesome deck and I'm looking to build one for competitive Legacy play.
I have a question, however. My biggest concern with this deck is time. It's great that this deck can compete but are we going to get hit for slow play if we have to keep milling and shuffling our deck away to get our combo out? At the very least, it seems like it might be very irritating for other players to have to sit and wait while we spend the next few minutes doing this. And what happens when we side in an extra Eldrazi for the second and third games? Then it becomes much more difficult to get our three Narcos out and then get a dread return, sharuum and blasting station into the grave before hitting one of those Eldrazi.
All I'm saying is I fear that this deck is theoretically competitive (in that it can compete with other strong tournament decks) but not realistically competitive because of time constraints. Can anyone say more on this? Are my fears unfounded or are they legitimate?
Hey all! I'm new here and thought I'd share a deck I've been working on for awhile. It's somewhat based on Manuel Bevand's old extended deck which goes by the same name and can be found here. I love suggestions and constructive criticism. If you know how to make this list better or have ideas, please share. Thanks!
This deck has a fairly slow clock but is quite powerful because of the incredible synergy of the cards. There's no one card in this deck that is super powerful; everything just works together really well. Orb Control easily has the most synergy of any deck I've built and while I don't think it's tournament worthy in the legacy scene, it seriously kills in casual play. It's also cheap to build and a blast to pilot. Here's the list:
9 -- 1 CMC Cards
24 -- 2 CMC Cards
5 -- 3 CMC Cards
2 -- 4 CMC Cards (effectively zero because these are the Ensnare)
How it works:
It works by getting out Mesmeric Orbs to mill your opponent while stalling them by bouncing back their cards with Boomerang and Echoing Truth. Cards like Rhystic Study, Fabricate, Impulse and Brainstorm (while also protecting your hand) help you get up and running and keep you moving through your deck smoothly. Vision Charm can speed things up a bit as well as do a couple other potentially useful things while Counterspell and Muddle the Mixture help protect you. Muddle the Mixture also serves as an additional way to tutor up more Mesmeric Orbs and bounce cards. Finally, Drain Power and Ensnare speed the process up among other things.
Card Strategy:
Why use Vision Charm over something like Tome Scour?
I can see a question like this coming up a lot. I mean, Tome Scour mills the opponent for five cards and Vision Charm only mills for four. Wouldn't Tome Scour be better? My personal opinion is that Vision Charm is significantly better for a number of reasons.
First, Vision Charm is an instant, not a sorcery. In a deck that hinges on having mana available on your opponent's turn to bounce their stuff is incredibly important. If you play Tome Scour, you //have// to use it on your turn and this forces you to make the decision on your turn whether you will need that additional mana or not for bouncing or countering your opponent's stuff. With Vision Charm you can sit back while your opponent does their thing and then, once they've finished, before your turn drop Vision Charm if you want. This reduces your chances of having it countered, as well, because they may tap out their lands on their turn.
Second, there is a lot of synergy with Vision Charm and Drain Power. For example, you can drop Vision Charm to turn your opponent's mountains into islands until end of turn then drop Drain Power and use his mana more effectively for your own purposes.
Third, Vision Charm serves as artifact protection. For example, if your opponent tries to Naturalize your Mesmeric Orb or Elixir of Immortality, simply play Vision Charm and phase your artifact out of danger.
Finally, even Vision Charm's artifact phasing ability is situationally useful outside of artifact protection. There was a game that I played with a friend where he put a Door to Nothingness into play. That was a close game. I had nearly milled out his library but if that artifact remained in play, on his next turn I was going to lose. Thankfully I had a solution to that little problem. I had Vision Charm to phase his artifact out, if needed (didn't actually have to because I drew a Echoing Truth on my turn). I then proceeded to tap his creatures with Ensnare for the win.
Don't underestimate the power of Vision Charm. It is a great card in this deck!
Why use Rhystic Study over Howling Mine?
Several other Mesmeric Orb decks run Howling Mine, including the original list that I built mine off of. So why is it that I prefer Rhystic Study? There are a number of reasons.
First, Rhystic Study doesn't help your opponent. Howling Mine, on the other hand, lets your opponent build his or her hand and potentially draw something which could be your downfall. Rhystic Study either slows your opponent down or gives you card advantage.
Second, Rhystic Study does more than just draw you extra cards. It puts your opponent on edge and gives him or her just one more thing to think about on their turn. They have to choose between paying one extra mana or letting you draw an extra card. Either choice hurts them considerably too. If they pay the mana, they are not only slowed down but they are also forced to tap more lands which means you get to mill more cards off their library with Mesmeric Orb.
Third, you are drawing cards on your opponent's turn rather than during your draw step. In a deck that runs 26 instants, this is huge. You never know what useful card your opponent might let you draw. In a game I played with a friend, this actually saved me. He played something (can't remember what it was now) and he let me draw. I drew into a Disrupt (which has since been swapped out with Muddle the Mixture) and then he tapped out to play Suffer the Past to finish me. Instead, I countered his spell and proceeded to win on his next untap step.
Fourth, in my experience, players generally tend to run more artifact hate than they do enchantment hate. Opponent's also tend to underestimate how powerful this card is for you and instead focus on trying to nuke your Mesmeric Orbs
So what are the downsides to running this card instead of Howling Mine?
Well, it costs an additional mana to play which also means it can't be tutored up by Muddle the Mixture. It's also not an artifact so it can't be found by Fabricate and since it's blue rather than colorless, it can be countered by cards like Red Elemental Blast.
Why run Elixir of Immortality instead of Gaea's Blessing?
Many other Mesmeric Orb decks run Gaea's Blessing because it is a great anti-mill card. There are several benefits to running a card like this.
First, once you've got a few Orbs out, you're likely to mill one of your Blessings into your graveyard at some point which then conveniently shuffles your grave back into your library. This way you can play aggressively with confidence that you are not going to mill yourself out before you take out your opponent.
Gaea's Blessing is a great card so why would I want to run Elixir of Immortality instead? The answer is simple. Control.
With Blessing, you have no control over when your grave is shuffled back into your library. Whenever one gets milled into your grave, its ability triggers. It's as simple as that.
What I find with Elixir is that I am given a small measure of extra control. With the Elixir, you decide when to shuffle your grave into your library. Many times, I want to draw specific cards out of my library and it's beneficial to have a smaller library to go through. In other words, if there are cards in your library that you still want to draw, you may not want to dilute your library by shuffling your graveyard back in. With Elixir, you can drop it for 1 and wait until you are ready to crack it.
Elixir's second ability is also useful in a deck that has no creature defense. No matter how much bouncing you do, you are bound to take some damage because this deck has no other defense. There have been many games where gaining five life has been crucial to my survival.
So the only concern comes down to, what if I don't draw an Elixir? I only run two in the list but between the Fabricates and the draw spells, there hasn't been a game yet where I've needed to draw an Elixir and haven't. I've played games where I've gone through my library twice and have drawn an Elixir both times.
The only real downside then is the mana cost. It requires you to keep mana free so you can crack it when you need to. Gaea's Blessing costs nothing. However, Blessing is also a dead card in your hand.
Really it is a matter of personal choice. I personally find the extra control I get from Elixir to be crucial to how I pilot the deck. Other players might think differently.
Why Impulse?
Impulse not only lets me grab a card I may need but also helps me stack the deck, in a sense. Because the deck mills through itself pretty quickly, it's actually important to take into consideration the order of the deck. For instance... Let's say I've got a Muddle the Mixture or Fabricate in my hand. I play Impulse looking for some creature bounce but I also run into another Orb. I'll grab my Echoing Truth or whatever and then conveniently place my Orb on the bottom of the deck where I won't have to worry about it getting milled until I can tutor it up. Cards like Ponder, on the other hand can't do this for me.
Thanks to TheRogue and -spooky- for your input on my budget build! It's listed on page 11 in case anyone is interested in seeing it.
I need to get a hold of them first but I really think Pact of Negation is an amazing card to run in Cephalid Breakfast decks. In some ways it is almost better than FoW in Breakfast. And it's cheaper too. I have considered Daze over Dispel and I honestly can't decide which is the better card to run. With my build, I don't aim for pure speed in comboing out so much as I do setting up a hand which can protect it, especially for the second and third games. By the time I'm ready to go off, I usually have one extra mana or so to pay for a Dispel.
To Sparki, cards like Meddling Mage are why I run Conflagrate and Magma Jet in my list. Conflagrate can be especially useful because it lets you flashback and dump any combo cards you might have accrued in your hand that need to be in the grave while also nuking any creatures that prevent you from winning.
Solid budget lists are tougher to build because (well depending on how budget you are going for) you don't have the benefit of as powerful a mana base. This is why I run U/r unlike other lists.
Hello all! New to this thread and this forum so I thought I'd make my first post here by sharing a budget version of Cephalid Breakfast I've been working on that I call Hot Sushi. I'm not sure that it's tournament ready yet but it's also a little different from most other Ceph Break builds I've seen and I thought I'd go ahead and share it in case it might spark some ideas. Also, it can be put together for under $40.
It's a Blue and Red variation that works using the standard Kiki/Pestermite combo. It also packs quite a lot of protection.
Protection:
2x Echoing Truth -- Bounces artifact hate, creatures, you name it
3x Magma Jet -- Gets rid of creatures as well as helps you set up your draw.
3x Muddle the Mixture -- Counters nasty instants and sorceries while also acting as a tutor for Cephalid Illusionist.
3x Spell Pierce -- An efficient, cheap counterspell
2x Dispel -- It's situational but could save you the game. (definitely considering swapping these out for something else)
1x Conflagrate -- serves as small creature destruction and also a fool proof against having important combo cards like Karmic Guide stuck in your hand when you're ready to go off. Simply flashback and discard. This has helped me blow through crap that otherwise would have kept me from going off like Linvala, Keeper of Silence
Overall it's pretty good. I've played against a Zoo deck and Merfolk deck (no sb) and faired pretty well against them. I've also played against LEDless Dredge and that's a pretty difficult match up because it is simply faster than me. Sideboarding in graveyard hate always helps, though.
Here's the scores:
1. Turn 6, 12 Life
2. Turn 5, 16 Life
3. Turn 10, 14 Life
4. Turn 4, 12 Life
5. Turn 3, 14 Life
6. Turn 3, 14 Life
7. Turn 4, 14 Life
8. Turn 4, 12 Life
9. Turn 4, 14 Life
10. Epic Fail... didn't even finish
The first three games were rough because I had to mulligan and was not getting good hands. Game three was particularly tough because I mulligan'd down to 5 and still couldn't get a decent hand. The next six games, I had decent to good hands and the deck performed very consistently. The final game I drew absolutely dump hands, not ever seeing Fluctuator and with my last two hands of five and four, not even drawing a land. In that case, I should have kept one of my earlier hands and just hoped to draw into a Fluctuator.
I didn't goldfish my list today because I've done it already in the past. I don't have any numbers but I think it might be just a pinch more consistent than your list, lancelot123, but only slightly so. And that's because Caldera gives me one more cycler in a pinch.
Soldier, I like the idea behind your list but I couldn't get it to work. I kept walling up with non-cyclers I couldn't get rid of and wasn't ready to combo off until turn 6 or after, most games. Maybe I was just having bad luck with it. Either way, I like the ideas incorporated into your list and I'm wondering if it could be successfully blended with one of the more traditional lists.
bganns, your list is kind of going in the direction I think we want to go but I also don't understand some of your choices. Even with Restless Dreams, I'm not sure why you want to run so many Drain Lifes and Twilight's Calls. To me, that just seems to reduce consistency. I also feel like I'm missing something but I don't understand why you are running Noxious Revival and why you are running Scrubland. I'd love to hear your explanation for those!
Here's a new, prototype list I want to test soon.
4x Cloud of Faeries
4x Drifting Djinn
4x Keeneye Aven
4x Pendrell Drake
4x Primoc Escapee
4x Sandbar Merfolk
4x Sandbar Serpent
1x Haunting Misery
3x Restless Dreams
Land (18)
4x Blasted Landscape
4x Drifting Meadow
3x Dromar's Cavern
4x Polluted Mire
3x Remote Isle
3x Force of Will
3x Songs of the Damned
Artifact (4)
4x Fluctuator
Not sure yet if I've terribly hurt the consistency of the deck. Let's hope not!
lancelot123, if you don't mind, I'd love to put your deck up on tappedout.net briefly (all credits to you for the list, of course) to goldfish it a few times. I'd like to see how often it goes off turn two and three. I think I'm also really warming up to Gitaxian Probe too. The more I think about it, the more I like that you are running it as a 2-of.
In fact, I'm also wondering if it wouldn't be better to swap the Spell Pierce out for something like Cabal Therapy or Duress for the post board games. Those would also have great synergy with Gitaxian Probe.
Tarkus, I do have to agree that Fluctuator combo decks are traditionally some of the least interactive decks ever built. You literally ignore your opponent and go solitaire by shifting through your cards. However, that's what I think is exciting about trying to build a sideboard that lets Fluctuator get a lot more interactive in the second and third games. It's not something your opponent's expect.
EDIT: I'm also wondering about the possibility of using something like Complicate. I wouldn't mind using it instead of Miscalculation. The only problem is, that Complicate definitely would not work for the first game and the SB already seems crammed for space (though still very open for changes). Still something to consider.
Thanks for your comments! Here are my thoughts.
Exsanguinate is a great card and I run it in my more classic Fluctuator combo list. Here's the problem with it that I see, though. First, it adds another non-cycling card to the list. This might be okay if it contributed greatly to the deck but I don't think it's necessary actually.
In general, I think of adding a second kill card to this deck as protection. However, adding Exsanguinate does not require the opponent to use two counters. A smart player will take a quick look at that Songs of the Damned you dropped and how much mana it's going to net you and counter that instead. Now you're stuck with an Exsanguinate that is useless and a Haunting Misery which is probably going to require you to drop at least one more land before being able to be hard cast.
I run Haunting Misery over Exsanguinate because it is cheaper. Dealing 20 damage with Haunting Misery requires 20 creatures in your grave but dealing 20 with Exsanguinate requires 22 creatures in your grave. Depending on how your deck is stacked, this could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
That said, I think Caldera and Autumn's Veil offer the best protection I can think of. Caldera is a land so it can't be countered (except for Stifle or something) and then the mana it produces is used to play Autumn's Veil before I ever drop Lotus Petal or Songs of the Damned or any of my combo pieces. This forces my opponent to have an answer for both Autumn's Veil and the combo. It's not fool proof but it's the best I've come across for this.
I also want to point out that I am running only 8 non-cycling lands in my list, not 14. Post sideboard is when I run 14 non-cyclers but at that point the deck is no longer meant to be played like a combo deck. Instead, I play it more like aggro control. I start hard casting some of my creatures, cycling cards to get more creatures and counter spells as well as Songs' and Twilight's Calls. True. You do "wall" up more easily. There's no way you are going to cycle through your whole deck. But you don't need to because second and third game, you play slower and more carefully. When you get the chance, you can drop Twilight's Call for one mana, effectively, to bring back a chunk of creatures from your graveyard. That's when you try to swing the game.
I guess I should have been more clear about how to play each and when to use your sideboard. Against aggro or fast combo, you want to stay with the combo list so you can race them. Against aggro control, control or a deck that's sided hate in against you, you want to use your sideboard to bring some control into the game on your side. At this point, you are just trying to hold off and win over the long haul.
At least, that's how I see it being played. Your thoughts?
Edit: I forgot to comment on a few things that I wanted to. I really like the idea of using Elvish Spirit Guide. It's still fairly difficult to counter because it requires something like Stifle (which I think is surprisingly underplayed) to counter it and it offers the possibility of a second-turn win. However, while Caldera does slow your clock down to turn three, I really like the level of consistency it adds to the deck. It gives you another cycling card so it's almost like you are running a deck with only 7 non-cyclers and this decreases the chance of getting "walled" up.
I would not recommend Gitaxian Probe for this deck. This deck needs to run a high level of creatures to increase consistency. The fewer cycling creatures you run, the less likely it will be for you to get enough creatures into the grave when you want to combo. I think Street Wraith is better and I run it in my classic Fluctuator list. Cards like Gitaxian Probe and Street Wraith are really only helpful when you get a bad hand, though. They increase your chances of drawing into a Fluctuator. The downside is that they really hurt. Running four means there is a very high chance that you will be taking 8 damage when you cycle through your deck.
Disclaimer: This idea is based off of a combo deck that uses Fluctuator. It's nothing new and it's a combo deck that's been looked at in the past and found to be too fragile for any serious tournament play. However, I've been intrigued by the idea behind the deck and it's got the gears in my brain turning. I thought, perhaps, with new cards to choose from today (as opposed to the original lists that came out years ago), maybe something fun and decently competitive could be built from the original idea.
So. Before anyone posts anything, I know there are better options in terms of choosing competitive decks to play in legacy. This isn't the best choice of a deck if you want to go hardcore in Legacy tournaments but this isn't a casual thread either. This is about building a deck that is competitive enough to not get completely stomped in local tournaments where people do play good decks (but still not probably as good as the stuff played in a Starcity Legacy Open). It's also about the fun of building and playing a deck that's just a little bit different from what everyone else is playing.
So without further ado, here's my idea.
Pre-Sideboard:
4x Blasted Landscape
4x Polluted Mire
4x Drifting Meadow
4x Remote Isle
1x Darigaaz's Caldera
2x Slippery Karst
Creatures:
4x Disciple of Grace
4x Disciple of Law
4x Disciple of Malice
4x Keeneye Aven
4x Primoc Escapee
4x Sandbar Merfolk
2x Viscera Dragger
2x Shimmering Barrier
2x Gilded Light
3x Miscalculation
1x Autumn's Veil
The Combo:
4x Fluctuator
1x Songs of the Damned
1x Lotus Petal
1x Haunting Misery
4x Dromar's Cavern
2x Scion of Darkness
3x Songs of the Damned
3x Spell Pierce
3x Twilight's Call
Here's how the deck works. For the first game, you try to win ASAP by comboing out on turn 3 or so. This is achieved by dropping two lands and then a Fluctuator and cycling all of your cards away for free until you inevitably run into the other non-cycling cards in your deck which are the remaining Fluctuators, Songs of the Damned, Lotus Petal, Autumn's Veil, Haunting Misery and Darigaaz's Caldera. Once you have those, you can begin going off.
Ideally, on your third turn, drop Caldera, returning a cycling land to your hand (which you can then cycle if need be). Tap Caldera for green and play Autumn's Veil. That's your combo protection. Your hope is that it forces your opponent to have at least two counterspells to stop your combo. Then drop Lotus Petal, cracking it for black to play Songs of the Damned (or Dark Ritual if you prefer to run that instead) to play Haunting Misery for the win.
Because the deck runs 28 creatures, you're likely to have enough creatures in your graveyard to make it an instant win. Surprise! This is not a deck that's seen often and my bet is that this deck can sneak some 1st game wins in simply because your opponents have no idea what you are doing. That's the beauty of it.
But what about second and third game? The cat's out of the bag and this ship's bound to sink once your opponents side in all of their hate. That's why this combo has never been competitive. This means we have to do something serious in terms of sideboarding for the second and third games. My proposition is to run a transformative sideboard like the one above so that the deck then looks like the following, post-sideboard.
Post-Sideboard:
4x Blasted Landscape
4x Drifting Meadow
4x Dromar's Cavern
3x Polluted Mire
4x Remote Isle
Creatures:
4x Disciple of Grace
4x Disciple of Law
4x Disciple of Malice
2x Keeneye Aven
2x Primoc Escapee
4x Sandbar Merfolk
2x Scion of Darkness
2x Viscera Dragger
3x Miscalculation
3x Spell Pierce
The Engine:
4x Fluctuator
4x Songs of the Damned
3x Twilight's Call
1x Autumn's Veil
1x Darigaaz's Caldera
2x Gilded Light
1x Haunting Misery
2x Keeneye Aven
1x Lotus Petal
1x Polluted Mire
2x Primoc Escapee
2x Shimmering Barrier
2x Slippery Karst
Now the deck is tuned so you can play it like a completely different animal. You still want to resolve a Fluctuator if you can but after that, you are playing a different game.
Cycle creatures when you can and want to or even play them as chump blockers. When you need to you can cycle cards away and have a fairly decent chance at running into one of the Spell Pierce. In fact, before dropping your combo piece, you'll probably have run into at least one or two Spell Pierce or Miscalculation. Whenever you are ready, you can drop a Songs of the Damned and play Twilight's Call to return your creatures from the grave to the battlefield. The awesome thing about this is that you only need six creatures in your grave to pull off. But that's still six creatures you drop onto the field! Rinse and repeat as necessary until you win.
Dromar's Cavern helps keep you from getting colored screwed while also letting you bounce a cycling land back to your hand. One fun thing I like to do is tap my cycling land for mana, drop a Cavern and cycle. Then, if I run into a card like Scion of Darkness, I have one mana floating to cycle him with and a free Cavern to tap for black to drop my Songs and Twilight's Call.
It's still fairly weak to hate, especially grave hate or Wasteland or even simply having Fluctuator countered but it's not quite as fragile as the straight up combo list.
So that's the gist of my idea. It could use some fine tuning no doubt. I just wanted the challenge of building something different and seeing if it could become good enough for small tournament play.
I'd love suggestions! Cost is not an issue so suggest whatever. I'm also not opposed to completely different ideas for design. I'm really just wanting to explore different ways that Fluctuator can be successfully used in a deck.
1. True. If you've gained infinite life, you hope to have enough time in the game to get mana and play whatever you want, but the fact is that Brain Freeze's mana cost is much more reasonable and that's just a good thing.
2. It's also harder to counter because it's a 'Storm' card. This means that stuff like FoW isn't going to be able to stop it. They can only counter one instance of the spell but you can go infinite with the storm count.
116.2e
116.3d
116.4
608.1
(Will edit and type these out in full when I can get access to the rules again.)
As far as that goes, I went 2-2 before having to drop out because my buddy who rode with me had to be somewhere. Had a good chance of placing fourth out of twelve, actually. But yeah, I still think that's pretty fair, especially since I'm missing half the cards I actually want in my list and had throw some other stuff in in place of it. The decks I played against were Suicide Black, some sort of white weenie deck I think, Zoo and a weird artifact combo deck that I first thought was Affinity.
Nobody had ever seen anything like The Four Horsmen though, so that was a lot of fun. They didn't know how to play against it, what to sideboard in or when to crack grave hate and stuff. Everyone was very interested in the deck, that's for sure.
I have a question, though. I've been looking at it and thinking about it and it seems like our opponents are able to crack Swords on our Narcomoeba before we can get off Cabal Therapy because Cabal is a sorcery, not an instant. Because it's a sorcery it seems like the Narco coming into play is going to have to resolve and priority would be passed before you could cast Cabal Therapy at sorcery speed. Am I mistaken?
Long story short, I found Finn's combo with Orb and Basalt to be incredibly awesome so I adopted that combo and went on my merry way working on my deck. Well, I came back to the Four Horsemen a week or so ago and have read through this entire thread. This is an absolutely awesome deck and I'm looking to build one for competitive Legacy play.
I have a question, however. My biggest concern with this deck is time. It's great that this deck can compete but are we going to get hit for slow play if we have to keep milling and shuffling our deck away to get our combo out? At the very least, it seems like it might be very irritating for other players to have to sit and wait while we spend the next few minutes doing this. And what happens when we side in an extra Eldrazi for the second and third games? Then it becomes much more difficult to get our three Narcos out and then get a dread return, sharuum and blasting station into the grave before hitting one of those Eldrazi.
All I'm saying is I fear that this deck is theoretically competitive (in that it can compete with other strong tournament decks) but not realistically competitive because of time constraints. Can anyone say more on this? Are my fears unfounded or are they legitimate?
This deck has a fairly slow clock but is quite powerful because of the incredible synergy of the cards. There's no one card in this deck that is super powerful; everything just works together really well. Orb Control easily has the most synergy of any deck I've built and while I don't think it's tournament worthy in the legacy scene, it seriously kills in casual play. It's also cheap to build and a blast to pilot. Here's the list:
3x Boomerang
2x Counterspell
2x Cursed Totem
1x Drain Power
4x Echoing Truth
2x Elixir of Immortality
2x Ensnare
2x Fabricate
4x Impulse
18x Island
4x Mesmeric Orb
4x Muddle the Mixture
3x Rhystic Study
3x Spy Network
4x Vision Charm
Some STATS about the deck:
Mono Blue
26 Instants
8 Artifacts
3 Sorceries
20 Lands
3 Enchantment
9 -- 1 CMC Cards
24 -- 2 CMC Cards
5 -- 3 CMC Cards
2 -- 4 CMC Cards (effectively zero because these are the Ensnare)
How it works:
It works by getting out Mesmeric Orbs to mill your opponent while stalling them by bouncing back their cards with Boomerang and Echoing Truth. Cards like Rhystic Study, Fabricate, Impulse and Brainstorm (while also protecting your hand) help you get up and running and keep you moving through your deck smoothly. Vision Charm can speed things up a bit as well as do a couple other potentially useful things while Counterspell and Muddle the Mixture help protect you. Muddle the Mixture also serves as an additional way to tutor up more Mesmeric Orbs and bounce cards. Finally, Drain Power and Ensnare speed the process up among other things.
Card Strategy:
Why use Vision Charm over something like Tome Scour?
I can see a question like this coming up a lot. I mean, Tome Scour mills the opponent for five cards and Vision Charm only mills for four. Wouldn't Tome Scour be better? My personal opinion is that Vision Charm is significantly better for a number of reasons.
First, Vision Charm is an instant, not a sorcery. In a deck that hinges on having mana available on your opponent's turn to bounce their stuff is incredibly important. If you play Tome Scour, you //have// to use it on your turn and this forces you to make the decision on your turn whether you will need that additional mana or not for bouncing or countering your opponent's stuff. With Vision Charm you can sit back while your opponent does their thing and then, once they've finished, before your turn drop Vision Charm if you want. This reduces your chances of having it countered, as well, because they may tap out their lands on their turn.
Second, there is a lot of synergy with Vision Charm and Drain Power. For example, you can drop Vision Charm to turn your opponent's mountains into islands until end of turn then drop Drain Power and use his mana more effectively for your own purposes.
Third, Vision Charm serves as artifact protection. For example, if your opponent tries to Naturalize your Mesmeric Orb or Elixir of Immortality, simply play Vision Charm and phase your artifact out of danger.
Finally, even Vision Charm's artifact phasing ability is situationally useful outside of artifact protection. There was a game that I played with a friend where he put a Door to Nothingness into play. That was a close game. I had nearly milled out his library but if that artifact remained in play, on his next turn I was going to lose. Thankfully I had a solution to that little problem. I had Vision Charm to phase his artifact out, if needed (didn't actually have to because I drew a Echoing Truth on my turn). I then proceeded to tap his creatures with Ensnare for the win.
Don't underestimate the power of Vision Charm. It is a great card in this deck!
Why use Rhystic Study over Howling Mine?
Several other Mesmeric Orb decks run Howling Mine, including the original list that I built mine off of. So why is it that I prefer Rhystic Study? There are a number of reasons.
First, Rhystic Study doesn't help your opponent. Howling Mine, on the other hand, lets your opponent build his or her hand and potentially draw something which could be your downfall. Rhystic Study either slows your opponent down or gives you card advantage.
Second, Rhystic Study does more than just draw you extra cards. It puts your opponent on edge and gives him or her just one more thing to think about on their turn. They have to choose between paying one extra mana or letting you draw an extra card. Either choice hurts them considerably too. If they pay the mana, they are not only slowed down but they are also forced to tap more lands which means you get to mill more cards off their library with Mesmeric Orb.
Third, you are drawing cards on your opponent's turn rather than during your draw step. In a deck that runs 26 instants, this is huge. You never know what useful card your opponent might let you draw. In a game I played with a friend, this actually saved me. He played something (can't remember what it was now) and he let me draw. I drew into a Disrupt (which has since been swapped out with Muddle the Mixture) and then he tapped out to play Suffer the Past to finish me. Instead, I countered his spell and proceeded to win on his next untap step.
Fourth, in my experience, players generally tend to run more artifact hate than they do enchantment hate. Opponent's also tend to underestimate how powerful this card is for you and instead focus on trying to nuke your Mesmeric Orbs
So what are the downsides to running this card instead of Howling Mine?
Well, it costs an additional mana to play which also means it can't be tutored up by Muddle the Mixture. It's also not an artifact so it can't be found by Fabricate and since it's blue rather than colorless, it can be countered by cards like Red Elemental Blast.
Why run Elixir of Immortality instead of Gaea's Blessing?
Many other Mesmeric Orb decks run Gaea's Blessing because it is a great anti-mill card. There are several benefits to running a card like this.
First, once you've got a few Orbs out, you're likely to mill one of your Blessings into your graveyard at some point which then conveniently shuffles your grave back into your library. This way you can play aggressively with confidence that you are not going to mill yourself out before you take out your opponent.
Gaea's Blessing is a great card so why would I want to run Elixir of Immortality instead? The answer is simple. Control.
With Blessing, you have no control over when your grave is shuffled back into your library. Whenever one gets milled into your grave, its ability triggers. It's as simple as that.
What I find with Elixir is that I am given a small measure of extra control. With the Elixir, you decide when to shuffle your grave into your library. Many times, I want to draw specific cards out of my library and it's beneficial to have a smaller library to go through. In other words, if there are cards in your library that you still want to draw, you may not want to dilute your library by shuffling your graveyard back in. With Elixir, you can drop it for 1 and wait until you are ready to crack it.
Elixir's second ability is also useful in a deck that has no creature defense. No matter how much bouncing you do, you are bound to take some damage because this deck has no other defense. There have been many games where gaining five life has been crucial to my survival.
So the only concern comes down to, what if I don't draw an Elixir? I only run two in the list but between the Fabricates and the draw spells, there hasn't been a game yet where I've needed to draw an Elixir and haven't. I've played games where I've gone through my library twice and have drawn an Elixir both times.
The only real downside then is the mana cost. It requires you to keep mana free so you can crack it when you need to. Gaea's Blessing costs nothing. However, Blessing is also a dead card in your hand.
Really it is a matter of personal choice. I personally find the extra control I get from Elixir to be crucial to how I pilot the deck. Other players might think differently.
Why Impulse?
Impulse not only lets me grab a card I may need but also helps me stack the deck, in a sense. Because the deck mills through itself pretty quickly, it's actually important to take into consideration the order of the deck. For instance... Let's say I've got a Muddle the Mixture or Fabricate in my hand. I play Impulse looking for some creature bounce but I also run into another Orb. I'll grab my Echoing Truth or whatever and then conveniently place my Orb on the bottom of the deck where I won't have to worry about it getting milled until I can tutor it up. Cards like Ponder, on the other hand can't do this for me.
I need to get a hold of them first but I really think Pact of Negation is an amazing card to run in Cephalid Breakfast decks. In some ways it is almost better than FoW in Breakfast. And it's cheaper too. I have considered Daze over Dispel and I honestly can't decide which is the better card to run. With my build, I don't aim for pure speed in comboing out so much as I do setting up a hand which can protect it, especially for the second and third games. By the time I'm ready to go off, I usually have one extra mana or so to pay for a Dispel.
To Sparki, cards like Meddling Mage are why I run Conflagrate and Magma Jet in my list. Conflagrate can be especially useful because it lets you flashback and dump any combo cards you might have accrued in your hand that need to be in the grave while also nuking any creatures that prevent you from winning.
Solid budget lists are tougher to build because (well depending on how budget you are going for) you don't have the benefit of as powerful a mana base. This is why I run U/r unlike other lists.
4x Cephalid Illusionist
1x Conflagrate
2x Dispel
1x Dread Return
2x Echoing Truth
4x Halimar Depths
4x Impulse
6x Island
1x Karmic Guide
1x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
3x Magma Jet
6x Mountain
3x Muddle the Mixture
3x Narcomoeba
1x Pestermite
4x Shivan Reef
4x Shuko
3x Spell Pierce
3x Trinket Mage
It's a Blue and Red variation that works using the standard Kiki/Pestermite combo. It also packs quite a lot of protection.
Protection:
2x Echoing Truth -- Bounces artifact hate, creatures, you name it
3x Magma Jet -- Gets rid of creatures as well as helps you set up your draw.
3x Muddle the Mixture -- Counters nasty instants and sorceries while also acting as a tutor for Cephalid Illusionist.
3x Spell Pierce -- An efficient, cheap counterspell
2x Dispel -- It's situational but could save you the game. (definitely considering swapping these out for something else)
1x Conflagrate -- serves as small creature destruction and also a fool proof against having important combo cards like Karmic Guide stuck in your hand when you're ready to go off. Simply flashback and discard. This has helped me blow through crap that otherwise would have kept me from going off like Linvala, Keeper of Silence
Overall it's pretty good. I've played against a Zoo deck and Merfolk deck (no sb) and faired pretty well against them. I've also played against LEDless Dredge and that's a pretty difficult match up because it is simply faster than me. Sideboarding in graveyard hate always helps, though.