Use Mindlash and Hollowhead to put Morophon in the yard, Unearth Morophon and play or Unearth The First Sliver. Dump your entire deck with haste and flying. AV is a cute optional piece to make every Cascade chain end in a Recall.
Use Basal Sliver to shuffle around Slivers in the wrong place: sac an extra Mindlash to Unearth Harmonic, for instance. Or just build up black mana to spend on the colorless parts of costs.
This is also what I'm working on. Will report any developments. Things I know so far. Mana sliver plus haste sliver is amazing. Must have hibernation to keep going. Basil works great with mana sliver. Basically makes 1 mana of any color
Hibernation Sliver is fantastic, I would play 3-4 since it also protects you from removal. Probably over Visions, there's no need for Recalls when you have infinite Cascade. Probably need Darkheart or similar to keep paying for the bounces.
A Niv-Mizzet value strategy using Vannifar to Pod out toolbox creatures and grind. Hostage Taker is especially cute as a Pod target, since getting it out for free leaves you able to play the stolen card immediately.
Use Mindlash and Hollowhead to put Morophon in the yard, Unearth Morophon and play or Unearth The First Sliver. Dump your entire deck with haste and flying. AV is a cute optional piece to make every Cascade chain end in a Recall.
Use Basal Sliver to shuffle around Slivers in the wrong place: sac an extra Mindlash to Unearth Harmonic, for instance. Or just build up black mana to spend on the colorless parts of costs.
The manabase in that last one looks atrocious. There's no reason for gold lands, nothing in the 75 requires it. Unless you're just super, super worried about being able to hardcast your Leylines???
Still very sure that Borborygmos is the best wincon. A miser Lightning Storm means that not drawing it is a real danger, a Storm pre-combo is a dead card in hand, and Borborygmos is useful at every point of the game, as a pitch card, wincon, and straight up chain target without even trying to go off with Griselbrand.
Mathematically, Wurm is not better than any green 9cmc, although since the combo chains off so reliably it's not going to come up in any of these tournament results. Zacama seems best to be as a backup Chain option and Wurm stand-in. +9 life gets you to 29 total allowing 4 Griselbrand activations, +15 life puts you at 35 which still only allows 4 activations because it leaves you at exactly 7. Again though, by the time you draw 28 cards, you will usually be able to keep going indefinitely.
The deck plays a very tight control game of 1-for-1 (or 1-for-0 in the case of hitting fetches) while denying mana. In the late game, the constant filtering and cantripping leads to a significant advantage in card quality, and the mana denial plan makes it trivial to protect your few wincons.
For those unfamiliar, "Xerox" refers to an old blue deck that ran lots of 1 and 2 mana cantrips and very few lands. Every 4 cantrips allows you to cut two lands, and with a draw-go style and a low curve it allows for greater card quality, selection, and tempo. This is essentially how very aggressive Death's Shadow decks functioned before the Probe ban, although they were proactive instead of reactive.
This deck is absolutely a "mulligan to X and win" deck. And saying that the only such deck is Vintage Dredge means you don't understand what constitutes such a deck.
The strength of this deck is the ability to kill quickly; if you aren't pushing to win on Turn 1 or 2, you're just another combo deck that most of Modern can interact with powerfully. With 8 copies of each piece, what needs to be maximized is card functionality overlap so that the secondary pieces are easier to assemble and narrow hate is easier to sidestep. Chancellor is mana AND a green card. Borborygmos is a wincon AND a Neoform target AND a Shoal pitch. Wurm is only a Shoal/Rider pitch and is completely dead otherwise. Dryad Arbor is painfully slow, but allows for Turn 2 wins while maximizing pitch count without entirely sacrificing a usable manabase. In my list, the odds of missing your 2 green cards for Rider are 0.82%. In yours, it's 12.2%. When one (or both) of those cards is a Chancellor, my hand can combo off and yours can't, even if I can't do it turn 1 with the Chancellor mana.
Chancellor is definitely optimal for this deck. Turn 1.5 is the crucial turn, so your opening hand is incredibly important. Chancellor allows explosive combos if you draw it, and a Shoal card if you don't. It can't be replaced with "any other green card" because gaining 2 life from Shoal by pitching your Neoform is not going to work out.
Manamorphose is less concretely optimal, but it is a free card that fixes mana. You should very rarely be cycling it without a Neoform or Evolution to fix the mana for, since you should be mulliganing to those instead of Manamorphoses.
The risk of drawing every copy of Borborygmos before you can fetch one is extremely low. Comparatively, the risk of not being able to draw Lightning Storm, because you couldn't chain Shoals or the card count of your deck was wrong, is more worrying to me.
Manamorphose shouldn't be forced in anyway, it should be an autoinclude. As a free card it is incredibly important for making UG, not just for the second Neoform but for the first.
Lightning Storm only being a single slot is a downside in my mind. It puts the pressure onto finding this single copy during the combo, while simultaneously being utterly dead in hand pre-combo. Borborygmos is a good 4-of because it is useful in hand.
Lightning Storm being an instant seems like a fine advantage, but most of the time I think it's more valuable to just kill them before they have a chance to play any hate cards.
Borborygmos as a wincon means not having to worry about drawing the entire deck; in fact you do not want to do that. If you have already gotten Borby out, and need (for some reason) to draw the rest of your deck, Manamorphose will probably do it (3 and 4 are the most likely leftover numbers on Turns 1 and 2). Lightning Storm also does not pitch to Shoals and Riders, and does not offer any advantages over Borborygmos; both are primarily weak to countermagic, both cost 3 (or sometimes 2 for Borb), and a Borb that lands but can't combo is still a threat that many decks cannot answer.
Incongruity is probably a better sideboard version of Pongify. Tougher mana, but much more use in the deck.
Cards that almost made the cut and may come back in future iterations include:
* Depose//Deploy
* Thief of Sanity
* Nicol Bolas, the Ravaged
* Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God
* Incubation//Incongruity
There's not much more to this deck than what you see. Play all the best guild control spells, play Niv-Mizzet, get insane value. Drawing 3-6 cards guaranteed to be useful should be pretty backbreaking.
I'm also working on a completely different version of this deck but I'll keep that as a surprise. I like this version better anyway.
I would still use Borborygmos as the win condition, because no instant speed wincon fits into the combo as well. The idea behind being able to hold the combo isn't that you should always wait or always go for it, it's optimizing the ability to do both. If you feel pressured, or expect that you can just make it, you should push for the Turn 1 or 2. If you feel like Griselbrand is safe, or your hand is shakier; or for instance if you are up against Burn or similar where dumping 21 life at a time is dangerous, you can hold out and just have a big dumb flying lifelink man. The way that holding the combo would work is to start chaining activations and Shoals in response to whatever they do to interact; if they were threatening it the turn you Neoformed, you should be going off during your main phase anyway. If they do it on their turn, you won't have to discard to 7 and you can just untap with mana and the combo in hand.
That's a solid plan in general with the original build. Like Legacy reanimator, you can simply get Griselbrand out, and then whether you try to combo that turn depends on the amount of pressure and likelihood of interaction. If they can't do anything about your giant demon you just have a huge value creature, and if they attempt to remove it you start to combo off in response.
Those reasons are why I started out with all 4 Borborygmos and all 4 Manamorphose. They're both essentially "free" slots; Borborygmos because he has so many places within the combo, and Manamorphose because it's literally a free card.
I would never bother with Expedite; if you have to untap with an 8/8 Griselbrand because you couldn't get there, that's fine. It's not worth shoving in narrow, non-green cards that only function at a point when your mana is already a premium resource.
Chancellors are basically always worth it in Pitch World decks. They pitch to Shoals for a lot, affect the gamestate for free, and are solid if they ever come down for some reason. I probably wouldn't bother with the Spires, but I also don't know that a blue Pitch World deck would be cohesive at all anyway.
Tangle especially is fast mana and a 7-point Shoal, which is exactly a Griselbrand activation from any life total. If anything happens to land him in play (a bad Trap flip I guess?), he chains smoothly to 8 just like Rider.
I strongly believe Borborygmos is the best wincon for the reasons above.
Borborygmos is the best possible one-turn kill for the deck. He pitches to Shoal for 8, which is highly important and makes him a potential Pact target; drawn copies pitch to Rider unlike Lightning Storm; he can be hit off Trap; you don't need to draw him when you go off; and as a second Neoform/Evolution target you can chain straight into him when Griselbrand won't work or chain him into Zacama if you can't finish the kill.
Cantor is a solid option, possibly as a singleton to target with Pact if one feels brave.
Blue draw is extremely rough in a deck already running 4 SSG and trying to support 8 green pitch spells. If you want turn 1 plays I would look into the one drops that dig 5 for a creature, to find Rider.
Hibernation Sliver is fantastic, I would play 3-4 since it also protects you from removal. Probably over Visions, there's no need for Recalls when you have infinite Cascade. Probably need Darkheart or similar to keep paying for the bounces.
3 Dreadhorde Butcher
1 Hydroid Krasis
2 Deputy of Detention
3 Knight of Autumn
3 Leyline Prowler
2 Tajic, Legion's Edge
1 Thief of Sanity
2 Basilica Bell-Haunt
1 Golgari Findbroker
2 Hostage Taker
3 Prime Speaker Vannifar
1 Sumala Woodshaper
2 Niv-Mizzet Reborn
1 Vona, Butcher of Magan
1 Azor, the Lawbringer
2 Niv-Mizzet, Parun
1 Ravager Wurm
1 Blood Crypt
2 Breeding Pool
1 Clifftop Retreat
3 Godless Shrine
3 Guildmages' Forum
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Steam Vents
2 Stomping Ground
1 Sunpetal Grove
2 Temple Garden
2 Watery Grave
A Niv-Mizzet value strategy using Vannifar to Pod out toolbox creatures and grind. Hostage Taker is especially cute as a Pod target, since getting it out for free leaves you able to play the stolen card immediately.
4 Cloudshredder Sliver
4 Dregscape Sliver
4 Hollowhead Sliver
4 The First Sliver
2 Harmonic Sliver
2 Homing Sliver
2 Basal Sliver
2 Sliver Hivelord
2 Sliver Legion
1 Firewake Sliver
1 Necrotic Sliver
4 Ancestral Visions
Use Mindlash and Hollowhead to put Morophon in the yard, Unearth Morophon and play or Unearth The First Sliver. Dump your entire deck with haste and flying. AV is a cute optional piece to make every Cascade chain end in a Recall.
Use Basal Sliver to shuffle around Slivers in the wrong place: sac an extra Mindlash to Unearth Harmonic, for instance. Or just build up black mana to spend on the colorless parts of costs.
Still very sure that Borborygmos is the best wincon. A miser Lightning Storm means that not drawing it is a real danger, a Storm pre-combo is a dead card in hand, and Borborygmos is useful at every point of the game, as a pitch card, wincon, and straight up chain target without even trying to go off with Griselbrand.
Mathematically, Wurm is not better than any green 9cmc, although since the combo chains off so reliably it's not going to come up in any of these tournament results. Zacama seems best to be as a backup Chain option and Wurm stand-in. +9 life gets you to 29 total allowing 4 Griselbrand activations, +15 life puts you at 35 which still only allows 4 activations because it leaves you at exactly 7. Again though, by the time you draw 28 cards, you will usually be able to keep going indefinitely.
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Frost Titan
4 Opt
4 Visions of Beyond
1 Thought Scour
1 Peek
4 Shadow of Doubt
2 Squelch
2 Dismember
4 Archmage's Charm
3 Mana Leak
3 Spell Snare
2 Cryptic Command
1 Remand
1 Force of Negation
2 Ghost Quarter
The deck plays a very tight control game of 1-for-1 (or 1-for-0 in the case of hitting fetches) while denying mana. In the late game, the constant filtering and cantripping leads to a significant advantage in card quality, and the mana denial plan makes it trivial to protect your few wincons.
For those unfamiliar, "Xerox" refers to an old blue deck that ran lots of 1 and 2 mana cantrips and very few lands. Every 4 cantrips allows you to cut two lands, and with a draw-go style and a low curve it allows for greater card quality, selection, and tempo. This is essentially how very aggressive Death's Shadow decks functioned before the Probe ban, although they were proactive instead of reactive.
The strength of this deck is the ability to kill quickly; if you aren't pushing to win on Turn 1 or 2, you're just another combo deck that most of Modern can interact with powerfully. With 8 copies of each piece, what needs to be maximized is card functionality overlap so that the secondary pieces are easier to assemble and narrow hate is easier to sidestep. Chancellor is mana AND a green card. Borborygmos is a wincon AND a Neoform target AND a Shoal pitch. Wurm is only a Shoal/Rider pitch and is completely dead otherwise. Dryad Arbor is painfully slow, but allows for Turn 2 wins while maximizing pitch count without entirely sacrificing a usable manabase. In my list, the odds of missing your 2 green cards for Rider are 0.82%. In yours, it's 12.2%. When one (or both) of those cards is a Chancellor, my hand can combo off and yours can't, even if I can't do it turn 1 with the Chancellor mana.
Manamorphose is less concretely optimal, but it is a free card that fixes mana. You should very rarely be cycling it without a Neoform or Evolution to fix the mana for, since you should be mulliganing to those instead of Manamorphoses.
The risk of drawing every copy of Borborygmos before you can fetch one is extremely low. Comparatively, the risk of not being able to draw Lightning Storm, because you couldn't chain Shoals or the card count of your deck was wrong, is more worrying to me.
Lightning Storm only being a single slot is a downside in my mind. It puts the pressure onto finding this single copy during the combo, while simultaneously being utterly dead in hand pre-combo. Borborygmos is a good 4-of because it is useful in hand.
Lightning Storm being an instant seems like a fine advantage, but most of the time I think it's more valuable to just kill them before they have a chance to play any hate cards.
Incongruity is probably a better sideboard version of Pongify. Tougher mana, but much more use in the deck.
3 Niv-Mizzet Reborn
2 Etrata, the Silencer
2 Vraska, Golgari Queen
1 Ral, Storm Conduit
Stuff
3 Cindervines
2 Knight of Autumn
4 Growth Spiral
2 Consecrate//Consume
1 Sphinx's Insight
1 Expansion//Explosion
Spot Removal
2 Assassin's Trophy
2 Bedevil
1 Angrath's Rampage
1 Deathsprout
1 Justice Strike
2 Kaya's Wrath
2 Clarion Call
Counters
3 Absorb
2 Ionize
Discard
3 Thought Erasure
Cards that almost made the cut and may come back in future iterations include:
* Depose//Deploy
* Thief of Sanity
* Nicol Bolas, the Ravaged
* Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God
* Incubation//Incongruity
There's not much more to this deck than what you see. Play all the best guild control spells, play Niv-Mizzet, get insane value. Drawing 3-6 cards guaranteed to be useful should be pretty backbreaking.
I'm also working on a completely different version of this deck but I'll keep that as a surprise. I like this version better anyway.
I would never bother with Expedite; if you have to untap with an 8/8 Griselbrand because you couldn't get there, that's fine. It's not worth shoving in narrow, non-green cards that only function at a point when your mana is already a premium resource.
Tangle especially is fast mana and a 7-point Shoal, which is exactly a Griselbrand activation from any life total. If anything happens to land him in play (a bad Trap flip I guess?), he chains smoothly to 8 just like Rider.
I strongly believe Borborygmos is the best wincon for the reasons above.
Cantor is a solid option, possibly as a singleton to target with Pact if one feels brave.
Blue draw is extremely rough in a deck already running 4 SSG and trying to support 8 green pitch spells. If you want turn 1 plays I would look into the one drops that dig 5 for a creature, to find Rider.