Hi Benny,

I would advise you to proxify the Paul Mastriano's "SuperLong" (rather "ponderstorm") as a first deck.
It has many many disruption cards, (6 duress effects, 4 Force of Will and 2 MisD), so interaction with opponent is at maximum for a combo deck. This deck also has a very broad line of play, you always can play around a given problem, plus storm is a very skill intensive mechanic to win with.
This is the deck to learn properly (it will take about 1-2 weeks to play it), with so many exciting plays you can do with only 7 starting cards.
You will discover how to intuit timing for combo-launching, how to mulligan, and the interaction brought to you by brainstorm and the huge disruption the deck packs. Plus, the storm combo is quite fun to set up.

Overall it's a nice deck filled with horrible bombs such as Yawgwin, Necro, Tinker, Power cards, and full ritual acceleration.


The second deck could be Gro-A-Tog, for disruption, but I feel the decks are too close for a beginner (the engine is completely different, of course, but Many cards are present in both decks and could give a restrictive feeling of what T1 is).
I'd choose rather Vroman's Lava Owls for a completely different feel of Magic, putting other colors in it, and have a stronger aggro-disruption package.

Many versions of StaX are interresting, but the deck is not interactive enough to be a good training deck (against Long, play a sphere = end game).

I've been testing a triangle PonderStorm - GroATog - StaX, and overall the StaX isn't interresting to play as the two Blue decks.

My 1.37 eurocents

Well, the 8-loyalty reanimation effect requires... 8 loyalty points.
Liliana must eat up at least 3 cards from opponent's hand, i.e, you must wait 3 turns before having fun with your graveyard.

Not even mentionning that a planeswalker can take damage like players, and that damage reduce loyalty from the same amount.


Basically Liliana is 2x free vampiric tutor, sorcery speed, and methinks it's hard to abuse. If you have established control, she's a free disrupting scepter, but it doesn't seem very optimal play.
On the other side, Garruk costs only 2 mana, and gives 2 free untaps every turn. Happy Bazaaring.

Tell me if I can help you. I live in Paris.

I think it will help Doomsday, and I would personnaly cut a couple or three street wraiths, and maybe a Doomsday.
Wraiths and Gushes have the same role, except that Gush digs deeper, and may even be followed by a playing a land that has been bounced. It's blue, for FoW (ok, Unmask uses black cards, so I'm quite unsure if the color shift is beneficial).
Digging a Doomstack with Gush allow completely new (and exciting) stacks. It will certainly speed the deck and give it more options.

I'ms still unsure about how many Gushes should be put into : 3 or 4, keeping a couple wraiths or just one?
Digging with wraith and digging with Gush seem to be completely different approaches for building stacks anyway.

Gush could also enable the Doomsday deck to shift to storm mode if needed : you have more than efficient draw engine (brainstorm, gush...) you still have acceleration, although less than in Longs, and the tendrils option.
Put one tendrils in the deck, one in the side, and keep a R&D for the Doomsday option.
Maybe in this case Unmasks could be replaced by Gushes.

Alternate wheel of fortune

 
Instant
Each player discards his or her hand, and look at the top seven cards of their libraries.
You and your allies put two of those into your hand.
All your opponents put any number of those into their hands.
Each player then shuffle the remaining cards into their library.

I'm quite unsure about the wording, but wanted it to be quick, impulsive but as chaotic as Will of Fortune.
It gives the wheel of fortune a clearly smaller effect, for you, but does'nt remove the risk you are taking by giving a good chance to your opponent.
You get ancestral memories for  , at instant speed which is a bargain, but I feel it is still balanced.

Compared to Wheel, you only get two cards, but the best ones anyway, and the opponent has virtually the same benefits as Wheel. You cannot kill an opponent by decking him.
Is it enough to allow it to be cast at instant speed?


X-Wheel of fortune


Instant
cannot be greater than 3
Each player discards his or her hand.
You and your allies draw cards.
Each of your opponents draw seven cards.



 

Okay for the "power level" part of my post, I just misunderstood the entire stuff.

I asked this question because of that ambiguous official ruling (I know it's not Oracle-strict, but I somehow thought that it could be interresting).

04/10/2004 The mana cost you pay includes colored mana. It effectively means that you PLAY the other spell as normal but pay 2 less colorless mana in doing so. (cf. gatherer)
It's an old ruling, but it's written as an official ruling.

I'm a strict newbie when it comes to official/administrative stuff like up-to-date rulings, are they still operationnal, do they override, which one is the absolute reference?
Okay for the oracle text that reads "put into play". Thanks for the answer.

Here's a strange question :

Flash' oracle text says :
You may put a creature card from your hand into play. If you do, sacrifice it unless you pay its mana cost reduced by up to .

I was thinking of a 2-card win, and thought about Hypnox.

Creature - Big Fat Mind Twist
8/8 
Rules Text (Oracle):  Flying
When Hypnox comes into play, if you played it from your hand, remove all cards in target opponent's hand from the game.
When Hypnox leaves play, return the removed cards to their owner's hand.

This is imho a power-limitation due to reanimation effects. They suppressed limitations for palinchron et al. but not for this one yet.

First, you effectively PLAY the Hypnox from your hand, so effects (should) apply.
Is this true?

If it is, then the full resolution of Flash lets you put the Hypnox' effects in reverse order : putting the come-into-play effect on the stack, then responding to it by burying the creature. Since putting the creature into play and burying it are part of a single effect, is it possible to decide the trigger order?
i.e. , is it possible to remove opponent's hand forever for 1U, thus having a strong edge over the game?

It seems that the brainstorm "true reach" isn't drastically affected by that wraith.
What is Braistorm's reach?  3 cards, that you draw, that is the immediate depth of information you get. You only get information from the top three cards you draw, then no more information is added by the two that you stack back.

Brainstorm considered with information :
You draw three cards, which adds three cards information, then put two on top of your library. It adds nor removes nothing, except the fact that you're drawing the two cards you already know. You're gaining a raw 3, but losing 1 over each of the next 2 draws.
The net information gained from BS is 1 if you do nothing.
If you shuffle your library, you gain net 3 cards info.

If you have a braistorm, no wraith in hand, and play braistorm revealing a wraith, you still have gathered information from the top three cards, but in that case, the wraith disturbs you since it's a "filler" card (it adds basically nothing from a business point of view).
So in that case it reduces to 2 what you get from a brainstorm immediately.
The point is that you can cycle it immediately to reduce the amount of already-known information for the next draws.
If you shuffle your library, then cycle the wraith, you catch up the information loss you had by drawing the wraith.


The question is : what do you do immediately after a BS?
Do you wait till you flip up the two islands you've just put on top of your library?

You BS usually for a couple reasons I think :
Protecting a bomb against hand disruption, or going for new fresh cards.
In both cases Wraith only add benefits (imho).

In the case you are exploring through your deck, seeking for bombs or any means to keep your combo running, you definetely should have a way to shuffle your deck after the BS, because if you simply draw 3 and put back 2 useless cards, you will have the next two draws that will be "dead draws". In that case brainstorming a wraith isn't that bad, since you will go exactly as deep as you could have been without, ending drawing the two dumped cards at a 1 draw-delay rate as if you didn't have the wraith (ok, yes, you are losing 2 life, and yes, it is important).

If you plan on shuffling your deck right after BS, you reset all the library, and you can immediately cycle the wraith, which immediately compensates the fact that you braistormed a wraith. The amount of cards and information you get is exactly the same with BS, whether you get the wraith or not.

The point is that in either cases, you can make the choice of cycling it now, or later. It gives more option (I agree it's not a very insane play).
When talking about cards, and card information you get from BS, wraith doesn't interfere in most cases, because you will be shuffling the library afterwards. It is true that it reduces the reach of BS, but only it's instant reach. Once you've drawn the two cards you've stacked back, wraith's drawback disappears.
Moreover, it allows you to choose when you will be compensating that loss, at the cost of 2 life.

Not to mention that wraith protection is amazing. As a response to duress, BS into wraith makes the bomb you've been protecting directly available. Same for topdeck tutors.
It can make mulliganing difficult, but wraith is a good hand-defense card.
Wraith drawn in a BS is sub optimal if the library remains unshuffled, but goes very interesting once it happens.

Well, hi everybody !

I'm Le Pougnezu, from Paris, (I added "Le" because every french stuff has "Le" in it, right?), which also means that I'm future-shifted 7-9 hours from you guys. I started buying Magic in 1994, and started serious playing during the Necro Summer.
I've stoppend everything Magic at Mercadian Masques, and started again maybe a couple weeks ago. Browsing on the web I found so many insane decks containing so many insane cards (displaying so many ugly designs, but nobody cares about card design).
The vintage environment appeared to be so deep, stimulating and complex that I definetely want to go straight to deckbuilding.

In real life I'm a hydrogen physicist, i.e. lots of calculations, statistics, and coffee, which also implies that I'm attracted to decks that have amounts of reflection behind them, and display vast arrays of gameplay opportunities.

I've proxified Long, Stax, ControlSlaver, and chose to focus on Long-type decks. By the way I don't know exactly what Long stands for.
See you soon (maybe) on development topics, and please forgive my grammatical and basic writing errors.

Le Pougnezu