I've been skimming these "control" decklists and I'm wondering to myself why I'm not seeing any cycling lands in these decks. Did I miss something about Crucible's wording?



Why wouldn't you want to use cycling lands. Basically, during your opponent's discard phase, you get to tap out and draw more cards. When we talk about card advantage, we're usually thinking that if we get to kill 2 or more cards with one of ours, we are in the advantage.

You bring some cards in from Mirrodin block and we get a card like skullclamp (when used in certain decks gives you 2 cards for zero). Right now, you guys want to make some sort of crucible deck, and I'm seeing some of that same advantage - you get to draw cards for nothing but mana. Furthermore, this works during your opponent's discard phase. Also, they can't really counter your cycling (they can stifle it, but that's still  card advantage for you since they used a card to stop you from getting a card?)

Anyhow, I don't want to ramble or anything, but can we start seeing some cycling lands in these decks? Who knows, maybe you guys can build a great deck around that huge card drawing mechanic.

Edit - fixed the wording on Crucible

I think 4 chants and 3 abeyances are too many. When I played parfait awhile back, what I found happened would be that I would take a lot of damage and then eventually try to establish some control, drop a belcher, and hope it was enough for me to win. While these help you get to that, I found in a lot of the games that I lost, I would draw a chant or abeyance and be angry that it wasn't enough to help me win.

Also, I noticed that you don't really have enough creature control. All you really have (unless I missed something) are 2 swords, balance, and (possibly) humility. Unless you plan on saving your isochron for the swords (or vice versa), you will probably lose very easily to decks that have a lot of weenies (oshawa, landstill, fish, wtf, etc). I would recommend adding 2 more swords, another humility (to make sure you can draw it) and maybe a wrath of god.

You use disenchant in the deck. While I was playing parfait, I found that I would usually have a large hand (once I got the tax/rack) combo going. You don't want one of the cards you're saving in your hand to be disenchant, so Seal of Cleansing is better.

Just so u know, when I played the deck, I splashed red for the blood moons and burning wish. I was also able to play gorilla shamans in the sideboard. Also, the burning wish allowed me to get slice and dice, wrath of god, and rolling thunder (win condition in case I can't draw the belcher).

One final thing, I don't think you should be playing with the mana crypt since the deck is not really a fast deck. It will probably do too much damage to you to really be useful (at least in my opinion). The only real play you can make with the mana crypt is to use it to cast a belcher on the 1st or 2nd turn and then activate it subsequently. I don't necessarily think this will work too well for you though. Similarly, I don't think you want to use the chrome mox in the deck. Most of the cards in your hand, you don't want to discard them in order to cast the mox. It's just not worth it.

Hope this helps

Just curious, but are we still on for May 8th? I haven't heard anything in awhile.

I have to agree with you there... (plus I dont' want you to move it back into my midterm times)

I think that's before midterms, so yes.  

Hey guys,

I played my version of cherry parfait in the T1 Tourney at Gem's in La Mirada yesterday. This is my first post, but I just wanted to contribute to some discussion.

I will preface this by saying it was my first time playing T1, and I really had no idea what the metagame was going to be in SoCal.

We were allowed 5 proxy cards, so I proxied power artifact mana.

Here's what I remember of my decklist:
7 Plains
3 Mountains
2 Plateau
1 Strip Mine
1 Black Lotus *
1 Mox Pearl *
1 Mox Ruby *
1 Mox Sapphire *
1 Mox Emerald *
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault

4 Isochron Scepter
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Orim's Chant
1 Abeyance
3 Argivian Find
1 Enlightened Tutor

1 Burning Wish
1 Balance

2 Seal of Cleansing
1 Story Circle
2 Humilty
4 Land Tax

3 Scroll Rack
2 Zuran orb
1 tormod's crypt

4 Goblin Charbelcher
1 Eternal Dragon


Sideboard:
3 tormod's crypt
1 seal of cleansing
2 gorilla shaman
3 bloody moon
2 slice and dice
1 wrath of god
1 rolling thunder
2 rule of law


Here's what I played:
stax - I got really lucky and he had to default the first game, got pwned 2nd game, got an early blood moon 3rd game.
Madness (with dragon combo) - lost 2 games in about 15 minutes...
ankh-Sligh - lost to land screw, won with a burning wished rolling thunder for 14, lost to land screw
nether void - his first turn ritual necro killed him, pernicious deed is bad, ended in draw, but I would have won with a few more turns, was waiting on the belcher, but it wouldn't come.


Based on the matches, I'd say the following things:
deck: -1 lotus petal -1 tormod's crypt, -1 eternal dragon, -1 charblecher, -1 abeyance, -1 isochron,  +1 mox diamond, +2 seal of cleansing, +1 karmic justice, +1 decree of justice, +1 city in a bottle
SB: -2 rule of law, -1 wrath of god, -1 seal of cleansing, +1 slice and dice +1 tormod's crypt, +1 replenish, +1 planar birth


The deck is a decent deck; it could get you into the top 8, but I don't think it will win you the tournament. It wasn't fast enough to play against madness, and it seems to die to artifact heavy decks since they draw a lot and cast really quickly. There's really no way for you to wipe the board of artifacts without hurting yourself.

The way I played the deck was trying to delay long enough and trying to see a lot of cards so I could ultimately belch for the kill in one shot.

About some of the cards you guys mentioned:
Abeyance - I don't think it's worth playing this card

Isochron - it might have been our meta, but the nether voids and the trinispheres make the spells cost 5 to cast. The deck doesn't get out enough mana for that type of thing

Wasteland - if you're going to belch for the kill, you don't really want to run into these since you can't remove them from the deck in any way

serra's sanctum - I found that I never really get THAT many enchantments on the board for it to really be effective. Sure, sometimes it might be really really nice to have, but most of the time, I don't think it's useful enough. Also, read the above argument about wastelands.

That's really all I can think of for now.

Also, to the guy above me, you really NEED to have 4 vindicates if you have black in the deck. A half-priced desert twister is too good to pass up.