I think it's still mostly theoretical.  A combo deck has a very specific function, to go off as soon as possible.  Other decks, like control and aggro decks aren't completely geared towards an explosion.

Every card in a combo deck, leads to the combo (at least that should be the plan).

You have to leave room for regular opening hands.  Some people will mulligan down to 4 cards if it means having a FoW, but in reality the possiblity of an average hand is obviously more likely than a God-hand.

So, a combo deck needs to be able to theorectically go off consistently on turns 1-3 to be competitive, but in reality won't always happen.

I've seen my share of bad draws and I've seen other people with bad draws.  It happens.  And just because you mulligan down to 3 or 4, doesn't mean that you will get what you want.

Oh man, I'm sorry, but you're deck is really on the slow side.  It's really not T1.


If you want to turn it into a T1 deck you're going to have to put a lot of money into it and even without power, it's going to be expensive.


http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=judge/resources/sfrtype1


That's the T1 banned and restricted list.  Make an attempt to buy everything on the restricted list.

It's a shame you're running such few mountains, because you're missing out on fireblast.  But I understand the concept of thinning out your lands so you only draw burns.


Some ideas.

Spark elemental.  3/1 haste for R.  That's = to lightning bolt on 1st turn.

You could easily take out the goblin piledrivers for 4 spark elementals.

I would also take out the reckless charges and put in 4 reckless abandons.

They are the same thing as a gobby gernade (4 damage though), but for any creature.

I dunno about price of progress, it's a good card and probably very useful in T1, but I'm not sure if it's worth the slots instead of a card like fireblast.

Here's a rough decklist, I've only been working on it between other decks I've been putting together.  So right now it's still in heavy testing with all sorts of new cards.


//Land base
x6 island
x1 strip mine
x3 riftstone portal
x4 faerie conclave
x4 mishra's factory
x4 nantuko monastery


//Draw
x1 frantic search
x4 careful study
x1 fact or fiction
x4 brain storm
x4 standstill

//Control
x2 swords to plowshares
x4 mana leak
x4 force of will
x2 teferi's response

//Other - utility
x1 fastbond
x1 mox diamond
x1 lotus petal
x4 argivian find
x2 zuran orb
x1 crucible of worlds
x1 enlightened tutor
x1 balance

Ok, here's some reasoning.

Land base:  I have 12 manlands.  I figure that you can never have enough.  And threshold will come from cantrips and discarding cards when in standstill mode if you have a stubborn opoonent.

Draw:  It's pretty self explanatory, I just use careful study to drop a riftstone portal in my graveyard, I usually just hold onto a single careful study until I draw into a portal.

Control:  Has your basic counters, but in place of two teferi's it runs 2 swords.  I would switch them out if they're not running any creatures and pop in either 2 counterspells or another 2 teferi's.

Utility:  This is just a mix of different things that can be useful to me.  I added crucible of worlds, which basically makes their wasteland and stripmines useless.  And I tossed in a couple zuran orbs (another way to get riftstone portal in the graveyard), as well as a fastbond.  That's a nice little combo for infinite life, infinite mana and infinite strip mining.

Argivian find:  One thing that doesn't scare me about landstill, is that I know that they only have 4 standstills.  So, I just break one, let them draw 3 and pretend they just cast ancestral.  Then they have to draw another one.  Argivian find allows you to basically run 8 standstills.  So, as soon as they break one, you bring it back and all of a sudden it's a little worse to break a standstill.

Zuran orbs: Part of the crucible combo, and they help drop the riftstone.

Enlightened tutor:  Fetch whatever you're lacking.

Balance:  You never know when something bad is going to happen.


Right now, it's running pretty well.  I'm experimenting with replenish, just to see what it would be like to bring back 2-3 standstills.

I've been messing around with a WUG landstill deck, and I run a couple riftstone portals and 4 nantuko monastery.

Even if you don't want to run the monasteys, I would still think that riftstone portal would be helpful.  Even if your mana base is running really well, being able to produce g and w from any mana would allow you to actually cut some of the W/G mana and perhaps add another colour.  Maybe for tutors.

Just a thought.

x4 agonizing memories
x4 chittering rats

x4 boomerang
x4 capsize
x4 man'o'war
x4 aether burst
x4 memory lapse
x2 turbulent dreams

x4 aether spellbomb
x4 dragon mask
x2 feldon's cane

x10 island
x10 swamp


Um, so basically, you just bounce stuff a lot and then attack with a 2/2 creature until they die.  

Dragon mask is nifty in this deck with chittering rats and man'o'war.  At least with chittering rats, if you have 6 mana, you basically make them play the same turn over and over.  

Capsize, with enough mana, can eventually return everything to their hand.  And combine with chittering rats to make them always draw a card they already have, it's a weird kind of lock.

Then there are a couple feldon's so you can just keep playing your deck again and again.

This is a great deck to play against a n00ber.

Mixing mike, that's what I posted this question and not a decklist of what I am thinking a budget would look like.  I just wanted input as to why people think this deck needs p9.

I was mostly kidding about grim monolith + power artifact, but the infinite mana always remains a positive.  Decree of justice and make 500 4/4 flyers is never a bad thing.  Anyway, lets just forget about that now.


JDizzle, you seem to have given the best reason as to why the p9 are in the deck, but I still see the power cards like the moxen as dead draws after opening hand.  After that, they're equivalent to being a plain old mana.  Because keeper is not drawing cards like mad, drawing into a moxen is just about useless.  And in such a fast and furious environment rampant with null rods and such, drawing a mox on turn 4 is highly useless.

I have looked at some recent builds of keeper and I am wondering why orims chant/abeyance are no longer run in keeper.  Especially with isochron sceptre being available to really break cards like orim's and abeyance.  Isochron + chant = opponent can't do anything.

Another big question in my mind, is where on earth did moat go to?  Like you admit, keeper is slow, why no moat?  Moat would shut down most aggro decks, then you only have to worry about countering spells that hit either you or your moat.

One last question for now.  Where did keepers trump card, mirror universe go?  I swear mirror universe was seriously the surprise card of keeper and would always take people by surprise.  I can't tell you how many sui or sligh decks thought they had me dead and then I popped the mirror and won.  Yeah it's slow, but that's the point of it.  You wait until you're almost dead and then play it.

Anyway, I'm sure there are other cards that are more useful in keeper than the majority of the p9, I have a feeling that people just don't want to admit it, let go and allow the keeper to evolve again.

keeper/clinger/4cc whatever

I'm sitting around messing with already great decks (read playtesting with proxies) and trying to build GOOD budget builds of them.

One deck I'm still wondering about it keeper.  Everywhere I look, everyone says that this is the one deck that NEEDS p9 in it.  Ok, so I've played it a bajillion times and I still haven't seen why it so desparetly needs the p9.  Don't automatically dismiss me as not knowing how to play it, I started playing in revised and have watched this deck go through tons of changes throughout the years, even when I had power and built a keeper about 5 years ago, I still couldn't understand why everyone was so obssesed with the idea that keeper needed the p9.

Granted p9 will speed up any deck, but in a deck like keeper which doesn't really rely on speed and combo's to win, I don't see how useful the p9 are.

Ancestral is the only one of the p9 that I see as highly usefull in this deck. Twister is risky because of the amount of fast decks out there that will pause only to sigh when force of willed and then continue to play a million cards a turn.  

Time walk is always good, but again in keeper you're probably only going to get an extra draw out of it.  Not like draw 7, tolarian, long, slaver, etc.  I love power as much as the next person, but I think that the true staple of keeper is mana drain.  Mana drain is the nuts and bolts of this deck which everything revolves around.

1 mana drain can equal the win for you.  1 mox probably won't do anything (and it'll probably be the wrong colour mox at that).

No matter how much I playtest with decks like keeper that have power, I can't help but think that the power is useful only if draw in opening hand and then only useful if drawn in pairs or more.  I mean, 1 mox ruby + a tundra on first turn hardly scares anyone.  At least a ruby, emerald, tundra can cast a twister.  But then that's 3 out of 9 in an opening hand.  That's not the most likely.

Anyway, these are just my observations.  I think that the p9 in keeper are more hype than anything.  Usually I either draw 1 power card or 0 power cards in opening hands and when I do draw them they're usually fairly dead unless it's a twister, or ancestral.  I dunno, but sometimes I feel that a grim monolith + power artifact would be more useful in keeper.  At least those give you infinite mana.

I'm not trying to knock keeper, I love the deck, but in the end the p9 in the deck don't scare me.  P9 in draw7, now that scares me.