Think about it this way.  It is a brainstorm that draws 2 and puts back and has the shuffle effect included.  Given WOTC's awesome fear of brainstorm they made a 2 casting cost sorcery instead of a 1cc instant.  Either this will be balanced and good and we will have a fair vintage card, or it will gather dust and our foil ones will warp.  If the latter is true, maybe nextime it will be a 1cc sorcery, or a 2cc instant etc...

Have you thought about adding a dark ritual to give yourself a little more acceleration?

Has anyone tested the idea of all in on artifacts?  Going with a combination of Top/Capsule/Thoughtcast?

You will have to accept up front that you will basically scoop up your cards game 1 to null rod, but the draw power is very potent

So, given that there's no valid reason to use the card at present other than being a douchebag...  As far as tournament magic is concerned maybe it should be banned.

That sums it up pretty perfectly.  I played against a horrific WW Shahrazed deck at a SCG once and nearly threw my opponent out the window.  I was so frustrated by the pointlessness of the subgame within a subgame I actually had to ask my opponent if he was serious.  I am convinced that the point of his deck was to bother people into submitting.  Imagine this,

WW
Force your opponent to listen to a really annoying sound that you create or he loses 10 life.

Goes right up there with trinisphere for me, ruins torneys.

If wizards wants a White sorcery for WW that simply says opponent loses half their life, then let them print it.  Shahrazed should go right up there with the original wordings that came out of Gary Gayax's basement...

AWAY

Steve, I generally agree with much of your theory and enjoy your articles.  This one was quite a disappointment.

The one card I thought may have been missed is Flame Jab.  Very difficult to make a case that is in the same ballpark as Lava Dart or Darkblast given it is a sorcery, but probably still worth mentioning

I know it would wreak havok on your mana base, but have you thought about Tarmogoyf?

Guys,

It is def going to take a real amount of time for this all to shake out.  Even slaver, what most would call a drain deck, was a brainstorm deck just as much.  Long and storm, same thing, brainstorm made them tick.  It is also going to be necessary to question the need for 9 spheres, as a lot of the chaining of spells (brainstorm into merchant scroll into A Recall) is now gone as well.  The real power of the spheres was to shut down the effects that kept decks so consistent.  Depending on the direction that vintage takes, spheres could be much less effective than they used to be because so many of the effects that they were powerful against and utilized to stop are now gone.

Quick Question

Do changelings count as snow cards?

AKA would a changeling help fuel a skred or be drawn with a scrying sheets?

Thanks

This deck looks like it is screaming for Trinket Mage.  I have been playing around with porting the deck from the last extended pro tour into type 1.  It has been an interesting experience.  Not sure if it will pan out, but it is worth a look.  I would also recommend Repeal.  It can gain you some valuable tempo while you are setting up your combo.  Black is also nice for D Confidant, Duress and tutors.  I had also thrown in green for goyfs, but they may get the Ax.

Very interesting Idea, I like it. 

I think that this deck is screaming for Trinket Mage.  He gets the top/lotus/mox/what ever else you put in the toolbox, is blue, shuffles for BS/top and beats for 2.  He is a great drain dump and even just pulling out the mox sapphire is often a good choice. 

Have you found the mana to be an issue, in needing atleast 3 black to go off with the will you look like you will strain yourself.

Mike

I have been playing a deck somewhat similar to this for a while and very much like what you have done here.  In terms of a good two drop, I have always played Dark Confidant and Withered Wretch.  I know the confidant will hurt you a lot with all the pitch spells, but cards are cards.  The wretch is also a beast against a lot of decks and in my opinion very under rated.

Also, have you considered Chalice of the Void?

Congrats on the finish

Before the fights errupt, I wanted to ask, does this stop Yawg will?



Yixlid Jailer
1b
Creature - Zombie Wizard   (TS) U

Cards in Graveyards lose all abilities.
   

#93/180
   

2/1

delta into swamp, rit, duress, rit, DT for Necropotence, cast necropotence, drop sol ring and mox, Necro for a bunch keeping ideal 7 for turn 2 kill

Good chance that me and my creew (there are 5 of us) would be able to make it.  Assuming you had it on a saturday

Here is the list that I have put together.  The two cards right on the sidelines are Tinker and Frantic Search.

5 Moxes
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Snow Covered Island
1 Snow Covered Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Underground Sea

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Timewalk
1 Timetwister
1 Memory Jar
2 Gifts Ungiven
1 Fact or Fiction
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Yawgmoths Will
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoths Bargin
3 Rebuild
1 Echoing Truth
4 Dark Ritual
1 Cabal Ritual
1 Cunning Wish
1 Minds Desire
1 Tendrils of Agony


I am psyched about playing it on Sunday

Here are the changes that I made,

Much better deck now.

I am going to stick with the Jittes and the Chains as they are both just wreking balls.  I added in

4 hearth kami

and removed

1 Diabolic Edict
1 Tainted Pact
2 Rack and Ruin

Only maindeck answer to colossus now is the wush or a dreadnaught (not really and answer so to speak).  But I like it much more now that there are actually things to equip the Jittes too.

LUPO

I have been running and happy with 2 copies of the Gifts.

I know that TPS has all but been replaced by Gifts, and with good reason.  But I am a combo player at heart and hate to see the thing die, so I have spent a good amount of time thinking about it.  I have an idea that I think can help the deck work better when fighting through a sea of Chalices and null rods, as well as make it less reliant on Yawgmoths will for its Kill.

My idea is to dramatically up the number of Rebuilds in the deck, from 1 to 3.  This is a fairly new thought, but with all the artifacts out there as well as the ability to ramp up storm when you re-cast all of your own moxes, this may be the solution that the deck needs.  Other benefits of rebuild, it is an answer to colossus, it cycles, and it counters a welder activation.

I am still digging around for my old list, as it has been a while since I have played it.  But from what I remember, I can create two slots by removing the tinker colossus combo.  I also would like to add in one Cabal Ritual, to allow for greater searching power with the Gifts.  Not sure what I can take out with for that though. I would also replace the chain of vapor with an echoing truth or Rushing river.  Chalice for 1 is the big threat, and a one casting cost bounce spell is not an answer.

My other thoughts were adding red for a burning wish and recoup (with Wheel of Fortune in the board), but that will remove the decks resilliancy to wasteland.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Mike

Had a chance to play a few games yesterday. For another creature,  Heath Kami might not be a bad choice.  While digging through cards, I stumbled upon Unearth, and have been intreagued by it.

Thoughts?

I can see the wish, edict, and jittes going.  I am a bit more hesitant to drop the will because I am running dark ritual to help power it.  The chains are in my opinion one of the most underused cards in the game.  Perhaps it is because the world just explodes if there are two of them in play, but the chains was one of the first cards in the deck and I designed the deck to function with a chains in play, hence the lack of draw.  Maybe i need to up the count.

Anyone have any thoughts on spoils?

Shade and Silvernail,

I want to Thank you.  Your posts were actually constructive, unlike some others whose names I will refrain from mentioning.  I take your messages to be that I have a collection of 60 good cards, but not a deck.  The Jittes are bad, but how can i replace them?  All of the cards in the deck serve a purpose and I doubt I will hit resistance from the T1 community when I say that they are all good cards, but what I MUST do is turn these 60 cards into a top tier deck.  How can I do it???

Greetings,

I have been working on a Red Black semi-fish deck.  Here is the list:

4 Gorilla Shamman
4 Withering Wretch
4 Phyrexian Dreadnaught

4 Illusionary Mask
2 Umezawas Jitte
   
2 Chains of Mephistopholies
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
4 Dark Ritual
2 Rack and Ruin
1 Yawgmoths Will
1 Burning Wish
4 Duress
1 Tainted Pact
1 Vampric Tutor

1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Badlands
1 Mountain
1 Snow Covered Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Snow Covered Swamp
4 Wasteland
1 Stripmine

I am very happy with the card choices as the deck is accomplishing what i wanted it to.  The major problem that I am experiencing is that it is far too threat light.  I do a great job of disrupting my opponent and often find myself in control, but nothing to do with it.  MY goal in building was to go for card selection as opposed to card quantity, as evidecned by the lack of draw.  My thought was to increase the number of tutors in the deck, given I have the entire slot of restricted tutors, there really was only one option left, Spols of the Vault.  I have been hesitant to run the spols as they are obviously risky and this is by no means a 1 turn combo deck that can afford to be reckless with its life.  The three cards that I like most about the deck are the chains, the gorilla shamman and the withering wretch, the environment is ripe right now to be hit by those cards.  I am finding that matches against the mana drain decks are generally good, as the disruption plus their inherent slow-ness gives me time to muscle out a mask/dreadnaught, but the problem comes against decks that will not give me such a generous amount of time.  Against fish/WTF or really any aggro in general, it basically comes down to my disruption working as expected (and theirs doing the same) and if I can draw the naught mask combo.  It is as simple as that, masknaught I win, no masknaught I lose.

I have tried the tainted pact as a more safe tutor, but it just isnt cutting it.  I need to either up the threat count, or increase the tutoring potential.

Lets see what we can do.

Mike

Finally going to build the deck this weekend.  I am really looking forward to playing it and think that combo control is definitly the way to go.  

In terms of the vamp over the mystical tutor, the other big card that it can get is the Lotus or a piece of artifact mana, which more often than not can be big.

One thought i had (no testing or anything to back it hence it is just a thought), what about a platnum angel in the build to go along with the Trike, so you end up with somewhat of a control slaver-ish type of build with the combo.  With the thirsts, the extra artifacts can not hurt you, I am not going as far as to say that a slaver is a good idea, but the core of the decks are similar, so it may be worth a look.

I am more encouraged by this deck after I played a powered TPS build at a local T1 this past weekend.  I played a TPS with gifts and found that if I were able to resolve a gifts, I would never lose, which I thnik is also true with this deck.  I went 3-1 in the torney losing to a mono blue with 12 counters.  He had suberb draws and I made a few play mistakes, but I also had tight matches against other decks, one of which I had to win by hard casting the DSC.  Point is that I like this deck with 8 counters and duress more than the 4 force 4 duress TPS in the long run.  I just dont feel like a more "pure" combo deck like TPS can win in the long run, the heavy control matches are hard and you will always find them.  I think that this is a much more stable idea and really want to run with it.

Thanks for the inspiration

The interactivity issue is an interesting one.  I do not think that a consensus can be reached as to what it means and if it is a good thing or a bad thing for type one.  

When speaking about interaction, is the goal to make the attack phase more important so that creatures interact and kill with the players playing the board and not each other?  I dont think so.  If that was the case then we could all just go play Onslaught Block Constructed.  

I think that when many people talk about interaction, they are really speaking about what a lot of people call the good old days of magci, when things were a lot less powerful and games really did swing back and fourth and both players could always get some shots in.  I do not think I will get much disagreement when I say that this form of interaction no longer exists and will never come back.  There are thousands and thousands of cards for us to work with, and the play and deck building prowess of the type one community has grown exponentially.  Decks are so good that one punch is often enough for the knockout, and that is the goal.  The point of building a competative deck is to be able to beat your opponent regardless of what he does or plays, win under any and all circumstances.  This goal is inherently NOT interactive and encourages players to devise ways to interact LESS.  There is obviously no ultimate deck in the game, but in theory it would be a deck that kills on turn 1 100% of the time and can protect itself from an opponents turn one kill if it is on the draw.  And as we all get better at the game and it continues to grow, we will get closer and closer to that goal.

Magic is a game was interactive and is still at a certain level, but when you are at the highest and most powerful, which is top tier competative type one, you goal is to no interact, because then you will always win.  Be it with tendril and cantrips, welders and workshops, or oaths and angels the goal of every deck is to make the opponent irrelevant, do broken things, and then win, not do things, let the opponent do things and then hope for the best.

Very interesting article and a very good concept.

I have wanted to try and build a combo deck with 4 FOW 4 Mana Drain and 4 Duress for a while, I had been trying to work it with the Power Artifact Grim Monolith combo, but it was not coming together as much as i would have liked.  The severance combo is superior in that it is two cards instead of three.

A few questions, why a mystical tutor and no vampric tutor.  Also, why are you running multiple 3 of's.  I am generally not a fan of this (except in the case of the gifts).   I could potentially see the Trisk and something else being cut for the 4th duress and a cunning wish.

I am very interested to put this together

Built the deck and had a chance to play test is a lot.

There were some things that I liked and some things that I did not.  Off the bat the fireblasts and atleast 2-3 of the forks will get cut.  I definitly need the 4th squee, 4th Rack and Ruin (these played amazing in the main deck) and more crucibles.

From the comments of the guys I was playing with, they found that while I did a good job of dealing with threats as they presented themselves, I did not put enough pressure on my opponent to make it matter that I dealt with it as he would eventually go broken and there would be nothing i could do at that point to stop it.  My solution to that will be to find a way to apply more consistent pressure, be with some creatures or some artifacts that actually pressure my opponent.  Cant say what those are yet, but I am on the hunt.

In terms of play style, it was pretty smooth.  It played very similarly to what I had imagined.  It played a little akaward with a crucible out, meaning that while you choked your opponent, you also choked yourself as you could not really develop your board anymore.

A more global issue I would like to post on is graveyard removal.  I definitly think that it has a place and as I have said above is very undervalued.  I also learned that phyrexian furnace sucks at it.  Especially with Sac Lands and cantrips so prevalent, it is far too easy to play around the furnace when you can only hit one card per turn.  I am going to have to dig around to see what other sources I can find.

Any thoughts?

Hey all,

We are updating the house stax deck and I had a question.  Does Darksteel Ingot really belong in there, it seems cluncky to me.

Anyway, can someone post the most recent stax list (or a link to one)?

I am looking for one in a generic metagame.

Thanks

The land count is low as I have 3 red moxes as well as the lotus and pedal to produce my red early in the game.  The goal of this was to allow me to fork/rack and ruin/blast things as early in the game as possible.  Mana could very well be off, but only playtesting and tweaking will help me fix that.

To play with the fireblast, I have the crucible and I had no intention of using them in the early game.  By the time I need them, I should have a few mountains in play.

I agree that the speed of the game is very high at the moment. 1.5 or 2 sounds about right in terms of the key turn.  My response was that I put in all of the red acceleration that I could as well as the usual mana artifacts to allow me to get some disruption in ASAP.  More often then not, one disruption spell is enough to slow things down atleast a turn, at that point the goal is to have another to slow things down more etc...

I disagree that wasteland is not powerful right now.  Workshop is running wild and the mana bases of most decks are very very tight.  You are absolutly correct that basic land use is high, but forcing a deck to run only on its basics will slow it down and it will not run as effectivly as it could (mono-blue being the exception).  Oath for example, can run on only its islands, but tempo wise, it doesnt mind having its tropicals or orchards around.

Again, you are right that most non-control decks do not run a blue card base, but that does not mean that they do not run blue.  I dont think that I will meet much resistance if I were to say that blue is the most powerful color in type one, you even suggested that I splash it into this deck.  Combo hates not having that first brainstorm or ancestral to get it rolling.  My point is that while quantity wise the number of blue spells may not be 80%+, but the QUALITY of the spells that are blue is far higher than any other color, and most decks run them, and stopping them can win games.  And if that is not the case an there is no blue, they get pitched to the bazaar, anvil, or chrome mox.  

All that discard stuff is in there for a reason, not all of my cards are going to be useful in every match, that is why I gave myself ways to get rid of them.  Still looking for better ones though and any suggestions would be welcome.

Workshops decks often burst out of the gate with powerful artifacts on both turn one and two, my thought on it was a turn three rack and ruin on the crucible and the trinisphere.

I am very convinced that graveyard hate is far too low in proportion to the number of decks that rely on the graveyard to power themselves.  Two of the biggest cards in the game (will and welder) are totally reliant on the the graveyard.  Taking that away is more valuable than I feel the community realizes.  I have the furnaces in the main and will keep the crypts in the board.

I will look at Burninator.

After digging around oracle text and card rulings (being an Entrepreneur has it benefits), I am wrong on both counts.  I need to think about the deck more as two of my initial thoughts are not rules compliant.  I am still building and still hyped about a mono red deck.  In terms of trinishphere, I am still confident that it isnt that big a deal as I can waste workshops and just wait and build up my mana.  The deck is in no rush and has many effects that are more than 3 anyway.  Next idea is to go read every red instant in the game and see what I can dig up (I dont think Backfire will help much either, but old gems are still fun to try and make work).

Trinisphere and storm are worded very difficultly.  Not much can trump them.  It sucks that fork cant do it, flavorwise it really should be able too, but alas, what are you gonna do.

Anyone have a thought on a different idea I can work in?

Wouldnt the cost of the firey temper be three when trinisphere checks for it, as that is the casting cost?