Wouldn't Trinisphere be a really good addition to the denial-plan? It's a useful tool to tutor/Tinker for and could also be part of a "game ending" combo (LftL/Crucible + Strip + Trini).
It's sometimes really impressive how much time a tinkered for Trinisphere buys you after some Wasteland/Grudge action...

   

never mind, sorry...-.-

Maybe Skullclamp is a really good option in here as it helps vs. aggro, gets rid of problematic Dark Confidants very efficiently and is Trinket-Mageable ( ). Also, has anyone tested Tombstalker? It's pretty bad if it gets flipped over by a Confidant, but I've really liked them as a finisher.

Btw., really nice list...like it a lot!

What about Cranial Plating? Has anyone ever tested those? Combined with Manlands (Factory, Blinkmoth Nexus and Mutavault) and Crucibles they might be pretty good. Another possible inclusion could be Skullclamp, clamping away useless Metalworkers or the same Blinkmoth Nexus again and again, thanks to Crucible.

Appletree

I think the best route to go with 9Spheres.dec is either two- or monocolored. I've chosen the second:

  //Lands 28
    4 Mishras Workshop
    3 Ancient Tomb
    4 Wasteland
    1 Strip Mine
    3 Barbarian Ring
    4 Mountain
    4 Bazaar of Baghdad
    4 Maze of Ith
    1 Tolarian Academy

  //Creatures 4
   4 Goblin Welder

  //Spells 28
    5 Moxen
    1 Sol Ring
    1 Mana Vault
    1 Memory Jar
    1 Trinisphere
    4 Jester's Cap
    4 Leyline of the Void
    7 Spheres (don't know which way to split them best...)
    4 Crucible of Worlds

//Sideboard
Barbarian Ring, Sphere, Pyroclasm, Serum Powder, Viashino Heretic, Pyrostatic Pillar,
Granite Shard, Red Blast, Shattering Spree, Pithing Needle, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale...

The deck tries to slow down the game until it can kill with some nonsense like recurring Rings or Welder beats. Maybe I should put in more Creatures, but I don't like them as dead draws in opening hands. Generally, you've won the game when you've removed all threads from the opponents library and winning from there is just a formality. I'm frightened how good Cap is vs most decks.

If you really want to abuse Thorn you should try to build a man prison build fitting four and some combination of Aven Mindcensors, Glowriders and Ancient Tombs, but I haven't come up with a functioning build yet.

That Crushing Chamber thingie sounds interesting, could you please post a decklist?

@KiernanM
Tainted Pact didn't make the cut because of the mana-cost. It's pretty risky to play, as well, turning up nothing and losing next turn to the other Pact. Another problem is that there's a grudge lying on me that forces me to ALWAYS draw multiples of cards that are more than once in any given deck...I hate that!  Maybe I'm wrong - but I don't think so  (from the Monk theme song...)

@kobefan
I would really play at least 3 Spoils as you're usually too fast for your opponents to foil your life-plans. Also, with three you shouldn't draw more than one too often. You can also Imperial/Vampiric and then Spoils for the card. Could you please explain more detailed why you decreased them to two?

Why no Seal?

8-2 versus SCROLL-DECKS????!!!!! Oo What deck did you play against?

Is Frantic Search worth a slot?

I would really run a full complement of Wastelands atm, as it is very good versus GAT. Maybe some of the following ideas may help you:

Playing Leyline maindeck would really help the Ichorid and Flash matchups. Vs Ichorid, game 1 it is an autowin. The other games, you could even side in some Serum Powders. With the help of the Spheres and Wastes you should be able to protect it from the Enchantment-destruction. Vs Flash it helps you slow down the game to try and achieve a harder lock.

I think one of the most interesting cards for Stax atm is Jesters Cap. Vs Flash its like a very fast win-condition. Combined with Leylines and the usual Stax-Tempo-cards it should be fast enough to be relevant. It's also very powerful at fighting GAT. You could play two Maze of Ith maindeck, two sided and play a gameplan of "keep one Beater in check, Cap the other four".
 
I hope that helped you in some way 

edit:

Here's an interesting example list I want to show for reference. It's built around these ideas, maybe you want to try out this version, just for fun. The proxylimit may be a little problematic, though... 

//Lands 25
4 Mishras Workshop
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
3 Barbarian Ring
4 Mountain
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
2 Maze of Ith
1 Tolarian Academy

//Creatures 7
4 Goblin Welder
1 Triskelion
1 Sundering Titan
1 Duplicant

//Spells 28
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Memory Jar
1 Trinisphere
4 Jesters Cap
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Crucible of Worlds

//Sideboard
4 Pyroclasm
4 Serum Powder
2 Maze of Ith
5 ??? (Thorn of Amethyst looks interesting, maybe even Main...)

Appletree

This deck is basically a variant of SX that tries to abuse Gush and therefore has to slow down to turn two.

Necro:
I forgot to write about it in the "Cards that didn't make the cur" section. Yes, getting a Necro down on turn one is still good. We aren't that far yet, I think. Most of the time I got to make that move, it got countered and I was down a Ritual and therefore a way to win next turn. If you look at the decklist there is no Spell in there to protect Necro (Duress doesn't count...you know why). Another problem with Necro was that you sometimes draw it when trying to combo. The deck already has a questionable number of useless cards (I'm still not sure if I should run 12 or 13 lands), so I don't think Necro is the right call. I may be wrong but for me Necro didn't work out as I thought it would.

Bargain:
Whew! I never thought about Bargain. Give me some time to test, or, better yet, try it out yourself!^^

Fastbond:
Fastbond is a card that makes the deck more consistent after it gets it's combo going, as it seems. Thats the reason why I play three Tendrils (not just because of Spoils, they're a real threat on their own, ending a counterwar with mana and lethal Tendrils): I don't need to go "Infinite".
The second problem is the casting cost. Maybe adding some Summoners Pacts and Elvish Spirit Guides would help that problem, I'm just not sure if that really strengthens the deck. Again, I don't know yet.

Minds Desire:
See Bargain, - "Give me some time to test, or, better yet," 

One last thing I forgot to mention is Tendrils mentality as an actual threat rather than a finisher. It happened more than a few times during testing that a counterwar over keycards ended in a lethal Tendrils.

Before getting started, I want to answer a question I think everyone out there should have in mind when looking at the
decklist (what was probably the first thing you did when entering this site…): Why the hell should I play this deck?
Yes, it’s true! This is a Tendrils-deck in a format where Flash and all it’s nasty friends are legal. So why should I play a deck
to which almost every Vintage-“pro” refers to as “Inferior.dec”? Well, I don’t know…yet. I’ve played some matches versus
the Vintage top-tier, but by no means do I state having played enough test-games to identify any win-percentages. What
I say is that this deck has something going I like about it:
-   The matches didn’t really feel that one-sided at all. Well, Ichorid game 1 did so, but…
-   The deck is surprisingly resilient to Counters and Duress
-   Although it is not even nearly as fast as Flash, it’s consistency is what speaks for it
-   The (non-Workshop)hate running around nowadays doesn’t affect it too heavily (especially Leyline…); also, it doesn’t
play flammable slivers…
If that’s not enough for you to read on, did I mention that this deck is incredibly fun to play?

The Decklist GushStorm

        // Land 13  just enough for Gush to work, not enough to fizzle too often
        4 Polluted Delta
        2 Flooded Strand  six is probably the right number
        4 Underground Sea
        1 Watery Grave  there to fetch out and Spoils for a four-of land
        2 Island  vs. TMWA, Stax, Fish…

        // Acceleration 16
        4 Moxen (Emerald, Jet, Ruby, Sapphire)  they aren’t any helpful early on, so only 4
        1 Black Lotus   
        1 Lotus Petal
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Lions Eye Diamond   don’t know yet, surprisingly powerful with pacts, read below
        1 Mana Vault     +2 colorless
        4 Dark Ritual
        3 Cabal Ritual  extremely powerful  mid-combo, early on only good with moxen

        // Card-Draw and tutoring 17  maybe a little few, couldn’t find anything better…
        4 Gush  read below
        4 Brainstorm    duh! Rread below
        1 Ancestral Recall
        4 Spoils of the Vault  extremely powerful in this deck
        1 Demonic Consultation  even better than Spoils
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Vampiric Tutor  finds Will, Lotus…
        1 Imperial Seal  see Vampiric

        // Disruption 10  more would cause the combo to fizzle too frequently
        4 Pact of Negation  counters counters, adds to Storm, is spoilsable…
        4 Duress maybe 3, only really good turn 1
        1 Chain of Vapor  not really thrilling, but needed
        1 Hurkyll’s Recall  can you imagine what Stax does to the decks strategy?
   
        // The Win 4
        3 Tendrils of Agony  enough, no Tendrils-flood
        1 Yawgmoth’s Will  gets removed frequently, so don’t get used to it…

Cards that didn’t make the cut

Chromatic Star:
This deck doesn’t need any mana-filtering. It’s blue-requirement per game is  reduced to one so that it doesn’t need to run
filter-cards. Drawing a single card with this deck is only good after a topdeck-tutor was played.

Fourth Cabal Ritual:
Lategame, this card is an absolute game-winner. Early in the game, this isn’t always the case.
It needs some other accelerant to be really effective early on (do not ever use your blue mana to play this). In the end, I’m
not quite sure if it should be in the deck, as drawing multiples is not really bad at all.

The fifth Mox and the Sol Ring:
Sol Ring adds just one mana to your mana pool and most likely costs you on-color mana. Overall just infinitely worse than Cabal
Ritual. Early in the game, you really don’t need any off-color acceleration at all. Just goldfish the deck and think about what
two moxes in the opener would help you.

Mystical Tutor:
Costs blue mana and doesn’t search for Black Lotus.

Interesting Synergies

Gush + Brainstorm:
Have you ever thought about how insane a Brainstorm is post Gush? Gush gives you the obvious +1 card-advantage at the
expanse of two of your lands in play. You get those two lands bounced, no matter how much counters they throw at your
Gush (thanks for the Storm). The Braincestral after the Gush will shuffle the two lands back. If they counter your Brainstorm
after the Gush, they’ve just countered a one-blue-mana instant you’ve got four more times in your library and increased your
Storm-count all at once. Either way, you always get away better than your opponent.

Pact of  Negation + …Lions Eye Diamond?:
When losing a Counter-war with a pact of Negation you should already have a pretty high Storm-count. Most of the time it
should be enough to spoils for a Tendrils afterwards, using LED-Mana to make this possible.

Spoils of the Vault + Pact of Negation:
A PoN for one black. Not that bad either.

So how do I play this deck?

First and foremost you should know that the turn this deck aims to kill the opponent is turn 2. On turn 1, you should not do
anything more than to play a land and duress. The only exception to that rule is when there’s no second land in sight (e.g.
Ritual-> Spoils for U-Sea). You might be tempted to play that Brainstorm on turn one to make your hand stronger, but with
this deck I found it to be actually better to hold back for the big turn. On turn 2, you have two different scenarios. You have
one land in play that taps for black: Tap it for black. Now you either have Gush and try to find that second land with additional
Ritual-mana up (!), or you raw-dog it with many tutors and even more mana or a Yawgmoths Will. You have two lands in play,
one of it taps for black: Tap for UB, then first play a Ritual (some people counter Rituals). If that works, try to assemble the
Gush + Brainstorm afterwards-combo. In an overview, you always just try to first add UB to your mana-pool. This is usually
enough to get the deck going. In short, the blue mana is used for seeing enough cards to produce a lethal Tendrils which is
found and cast off just the one black mana and some tutors. It’s really hard to explain how exactly you do that. Just goldfish
the deck and you’ll see. It tries to combo off in a way like Meandeck Tendrils does, so the articles on Starcitygames might help
you a little. All I can say is that you should try it more than once, even more than 10 times. I can get the deck to reliably kill
on turn two, even versus resistance.

The Sideboard

I really like the Leyline-tech Rich Shay used in his GAT-Sideboard. Versus Stax I usually  side in 2-3 Hurkylls Recalls, play Basics
and Moxes and then try to EoT Recall, next turn win. Versus GAT, well, I don’t really know yet.

Hope you guys show interest in the deck and help me make it run better and find a good sideboard. Yeah, that’s it from me.

Appletree

PS: Sorry if my english sounds a bit unusual...I'm from Germany 

Hi!

@Weired Al:
I'm not Gump and I don't live in an Amish Paradise, so stay serious
(I hope you know Weird Al Yankovic...).
And yea, I really think it has some consistency.
The sideboard is not bad, but the Null Rods shouldn't be there. I toyed around with them, as well, but they just
slow you down considerably and thats not what a deck wants which almost destroys itself.

@Kasuras:
First thank you for the time you investigated in helping me.
You may be right, but thats not a Doomsday-deck I tried to build (Okay, I probably shouldn't have named it Doomsday,
but I had no better idea...). It's just a Control-deck which tries to draw a lot of cards very early and then win as fast
as possible (well, that's sort of needed). Although Doomsday costs you even more life, it is still the best option i found
other than just filling the yard and winning with Will + Tendrils. I thought about that, too, but it is too vulnerable to
modern hate, while the Doomsday-finisher has almost no hate which completely stops it cold.

The only card you have to cast blindly early in the game is one of the draw-4s. Misdirection helps accomplishing that and
are also blue (FoW). I'm not really sure about them, but you need more answers to their counters than they have ones,
so that you can be sure that your draw-4 will come through. Otherwise, you're in bad shape. And yes, you're right that
I have to up the blue-count, but I don't know what to add.


The lifeloss is an argument, but I already gave my statement to that. The loss of necropotence is really, really bad but
you can run only one copy of it while you can theoretically run 8 draw-4s. Doomsday is probably the heart of Doomsday,
but not of this deck (once again, sorry for the name...). Tendrils and Timetwister sound interesting, as they're also useful
outside the Doomsday-stacks. I'll give them a try.


LED is pretty useless outside Doomsday and Will and can clog up hands. Ritual is really needed, as you're most likely have to generate three or more black three times or more in a game. They also help speed up the deck, as they're the
reason why you're able to win directly after Doomsdaying without passing a turn ( together with Will...).


OK, that's most certainly true.


Thanks alot^^, I'll go on working on "Draw-4", no matter how bad it may be or what people say
I'll go on actualising the list and playtesting against some decks this week, so stay tuned if you're really interested.
If this is not the case, well, then I have to do it alone.

Have a good time

Appletree

@Rittler:
I haven't tested the IT.TT deck very much, but the few matches I played weren't so successful as intended...
That's probably because I'm not a good player. Depite that, the Doomsday version somehow plays itself.
Of course, that doesn't say that my version is any better, but I think it's much more consistent at fighting hate.
@sa17dk:
No, in testing that wasn't much of a problem. Against Fish decks, you just try to play only one draw-4, steal
their Force and win the turn you cast Doomsday (which is surprisingly easy, try it!). Vs Tendrils decks, you have
to delay their win for about a turn or two, then just combo off before they have the time to search for and
play their Tendrils. That's what Duress is for.

It would be nice if someone testplays the deck and helps a bit tweaking the mana. I already thought about replacing
one Swamp with an Island, but I'm not sure.

Hi!

Recently, I've been trying to build a deck around the powerful but underused Infernal Contract.
One of the better builds coming out was this:

Creatures: 0
Spells: 46
1 Gush
1 Mind's Desire
1 Beacon of Destruction
1 Yawgmoths Will
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Echoing Truth
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
3 Doomsday
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
4 Brainstorm
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
2 Cruel Bargain
3 Infernal Contract
2 Chromatic Sphere
3 Misdirection
1 Personal Tutor
Lands: 14
3 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
2 Island
3 Swamp

Some card explanations:

The card-draw: Infernal Contract, Cruel Bargain, Gush
Dark Ritual+Infernal Contract/Cruel Bargain gives you +2 card-advantage for only 1, just like Ancestral Recall.
The bad thing is the life-loss, especially when more of them are played in a game. The good thing is, the deck
is really fast and life usually doesn't matter in most matches. Another plus is that the rituals in the yard are
good for the preferable Yawgmoth's Will as a game-winner and that it helps getting threshold for Cabal Ritual.
As for Gush, I think this is another underplayed card nowadays. Here, it's so good because of the low
cost of the combo.

The Disruption: Force of Will, Duress, Misdirection
Force and Duress are obvious, but why are there Misdirections? When playing this deck, I found out that the
most important thing to winning is to resolve one of the draw-fours. It's extremely good when you get one
through on your turn 1, which is exactly what Misdirection allows you to do. That aside, the card is still good
at using your opponents Ancestrals and pitching to Force of Will.

The Combo: Doomsday, Mind's Desire, Beacon of Destruction(, Chromatic Sphere, Gush)
The fin of the deck is the well-known Doomsdaystack of
Ancestral Recall
Black Lotus
Dark Ritual
Mind's Desire
Beacon of Destruction
The only difference here is that most of the time you can win directly after the Doomsday
without passing the turn by using either Chromatic Sphere or Gush. Unlike Meandeck Doomsday,
there aren't any more stacks in this deck. That's because I think with the draw-engine, you can
easily draw into that second Brainstorm to put back a card you need and disruption is not so easy
to get through yours. The only thing you can do is using Cabal or Dark Ritual if something like Null Rod
or Chalice slipped through. If any of the two Spheres hit the board, you can't win via Doomsday,
anyway. That's why Echoing Truth is in the deck.

I'll also answer one question that will probably come up:
Why no Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal?
It's the life, you know...

Some ideas for the sideboard:
Null Rod, Back to Basics:
The deck doesn't absolutely need its artifacts for winning, and it's running on a high land count.
Echoing Truth:
Nice to have against Colossus or Stax.
Energy Flux:
With that much basics, it's not very hard to get this one out.
Darkblast:
Owns Welders again and again.
Spell Snare:
Mana Drain, Dark Confidant, Impulse, Animate Dead, Meddling Mage, Sphere of Resistance...
Tormod's Crypt:
Graveyard hate is very useful today, i heard.
Second Chance:
hmm...

So, here are my questions for you:

Is this deck viable?
Improvements?
What would a good sideboard for this deck look like?
Why the hell is no one playing Infernal Contract/Cruel Bargain?
Can you think of other decks Infernal Contract/Cruel Bargain would be good in?

Important: If you find any grammatical errors in the text, I'm sorry. I'm from Germany^^