[Deck] Rogue Combo Creations - Spellweaver Helix

[Tempe]

Recently I've gone on a quest to find a good and fun deck which is viable. I created and I still play Nitro Elves, but I wanted something new. So I started digging around old Type 1 decklists and rogue decklists from Extended and Type 2.

While looking around at the Type 2 decklists, I found Satoshi Nakamura's Crush Weaver. I was interested, and investigated a little a bit. Although  Crush of Wurms is cool, Quiet Speculation seems a little janky and card disadvantageous. I searched around a bit for some builds, and after finding some other recreations of the Crush Weaver deck, including on created by bebe in the archived forums, I decided to create my own version of the deck, taking a different path.

Most of the decks I saw were 2 or 3 color, but I wanted something rock solid. Along with that, I wanted something consistant. Thus, I chose to go monoblue. Spellweaver Helix allows you to play with some other cards that aren't blue anyway, so I took advantage of that. Without further ado, here is my decklist.

//NAME: Time Weaver
        1 Time Spiral
        1 Plague Wind
        1 Amnesia
        2 Time Stretch
        1 Tendrils of Agony
        1 Mind's Desire
        3 Force of Will
        4 Spellweaver Helix
        4 Relearn
        3 Intuition
        4 Accumulated Knowledge
        1 Flux
        1 Tinker
        1 Thoughtcast
        4 Sleight of Hand
        4 Careful Study
        1 Frantic Search
        1 Time Walk
        1 Ancestral Recall
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Sol Ring
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Sapphire
        13 Island

I really love all of the intricacies and reactions that this deck has. The decklist is still tentative, and a lot of testing is still going on. I focuses now mostly on whether I should be going for the fastest combo possible or whether I should go for a more control-combo route. Right now I am kind of in between, but I should probably have 4 Forces minimum. I have gotten kind of stuck on my playtesting, and I have ran out of innovative ideas, so I am now revealing it to you guys to help me.

The basic plan of the deck is to intuition or or discard the huge "bomb" spells, and then spellweaver helix them along with a cheap sorcery like Careful Study, Sleight of Hand, or Relearn. Relearn is especially cool since with Time Stretch it provides an infinite loop with 3 of them.

The deck is surprisingly fast, and I have had a lot of turn 2 wins with it. The other cool part about it is that with all of the acceleration, I have on many occasions been able to hardcast some of these bombs. Against control, I once pulled a first turn Amnesia that forced a concession from then because they had to discard 6 cards. It turns out that had I gone second, I would have had to face a first turn Mana Drain off a mox and Force of Will backup. It was quite a spectacular moment. Other great moements include Drawing and casting two Time Stretches on turn 2 and the 2 extra turns thereafter, and I ended up winning by putting one of them on a spellweaver helix before my opponent every got another turn.

I haven't figured out a sideboard yet, but my plans for it are for some control hate (chalice?) and some large bomb sorceries that are more conditional. Plague Wind is pretty much the only conditional sorcery I have maindeck, and that is because I am in a metagame with a lot of aggro, and Plague Wind will often by you 2 or 3 turns. It also ups the sorcery "threat" count.

Any questions? Comments? Criticism? I welcome everything, and I hope that some of you may pick up the deck and have some fun with it. It certainly is a blast to play.

--Tempe

[Machinus]

You ought to use Panoptic Mirror to trigger the Helix every turn, and Imprint either Time Walk or Time Warp on the Helix with the other sorcery on the Mirror.

[Lockdown]

Why bother?  Imprint either one on the Panoptic Mirror and you've won anyways.  And it's already been established that that's not that great a combo anyways.  Despite the fact that I believe that this deck is not Type 1 viable, the deck does seem interesting.  Maybe a Burning Wish?  You might even sort of turn it into a version of Long, post-restriction, that runs Spellweaver Helix.

EDIT: Didn't see Mind's Desire in the list, my bad.

[Matt]

2 Time Spiral
2 Force of Will

[Tempe]

I admit the Time Spiral part was a mistake. That should be 1, as its obviously restricted. That would up the FoW amount to 3. List edited.

On the argument of Panoptic Mirror, the Mirror is a slow two card combo that would require a lot of tutoring and/or drawing to go off consistantly. Another advantage of the Helix is that is uses cards in the graveyard, making intuition a lot more powerful and letting you discard the combo cards and replace them with others, creating a virtual card advantage. Sure, its not an instant win, but I'd say that this way is a lot faster.

Lockdown: Where has this been "established?" The only time I've seen Helix discussed is in Bebe's old thread about it in the archived boards, where there was nothing but good remarks about it.

Regarding _adding_ Panoptic Mirror, by the time you can set that up _and_ have the Helix combo set up, its overkill. Just getting Helix set up is enough to almost always win you the game.

Matt: Thanks for reminding me about Time Spiral, but otherwise your comment doesn't help much. Thanks, but no thanks. I'd like a noncryptic comment for further reference.
Then it served its purpose, and I didn't have anything else to say, other than "If you're running blue, 4x FoW is the first thing you put in."[/color]

--Tempe

[Robert the Swordsman]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the deck, but the way I look at it, this doesn't do a thing.

I figured you'd want a few real bombs and a bunch of small enabler sorceries like Duress and the like, for I'm sure you're aware that when you cast one of the spells imprinted on the Helix, it copies the other one and puts it on the stack (sorry, I only clarify this because I didn't know this when I first read the card).

So, you could imprint Duress and Time Warp, and every time you cast a Duress aftwerwards, you'd take another turn.

With all of those 1-of sorceries, doesn't the deck kinda'... do nothing?

EDIT: I apologize, I did not notice the Careful Studies and Sleights, but even so, don't you feel that you should be running more?

EDIT2: Yes, I apologize once more, I wasn't reading very clearly and I missed quite a bit. Very sorry, and good luck with the deck.

[Tempe]

With 12 Cheap Sorceries, I have never had a problem getting one in the graveyard and the other in my hand. With all of the discard and "cycling" of the deck, I go through a lot of cards quickly, allowing me to cast one of the small sorceries to get it into the graveyard, discard a big sorcery, and find a copy of that small sorcery, all in 2-4 turns.

I'm not sure what you mean about the deck doing nothing, but if you check the top 5 or so cards of the deck, there are a whole bunch large gamebreaking sorceries to be imprinted on the helix. So when you imprint a small sorcery (careful study, sleight of hand, relearn) onto it with the large one, you can cast these sorceries for much cheaper than you should be able to. That's the plan. I hope I clarified it for you.

The reason I didn't use things like Cabal Therapy and Duress is because the sorceries I chose to use help the deck cycle through cards as well as be small sorceries. I love using cards with multiple uses, and these ones fit the bill just right.

--Tempe

Edit: Lockdown, thanks for the clarification.

[Lockdown]

When I said it was already established that it wasn't that good, I was referring to the use of the Panoptic Mirror/Time Walk combo.  Sorry for the confusion.

[Apollyon]

Cut in Intution for another FoW, IMO. Force is like Workshop, Drain, etc, in that it's a 4-of or 0-of card. Actually, it's more like a 4-of in almost every deck, but that's besides the point.

I'll admit that I'm not a huge fan of Intuition/AK, as it's pretty much an Oppotunity that costs a colorless for a card less, or Intuition on the whole. I can see it's use in something like Dragon, but I don't think that it's all that great as either a tutor or card-drawer.

[firebird365]

Intuition works well in this deck, though, because it's based around the graveyard. It isn't disadvantageous to have the cards go to your 'yard.

@ Tempe:

With regard to straight combo or combo/control, I would go with the latter. Your deck seems fun, but if you went with full combo, it looks like you would near auto-lose to other control decks. As of now, you seem to have weak matches against Landstill & Control/Workshop Slaver, so packing extra counterspells seems to be a good idea.

As for the decklist, it seems like there's a lot of random stuff that could be cut... I certainly don't understand much about the deck, but is the single Thoughtast necessary? In my opinion, that should be the card to go for the fourth Force.

As for the win condition, is it only Tendrils? Do your opponents mostly scoop when you go infinite?

Finally, have you considered Bazaar as a draw engine? I think it deserves some testing if you haven't done so already.

[GMontag]

You ought to use Panoptic Mirror to trigger the Helix every turn, and Imprint either Time Walk or Time Warp on the Helix with the other sorcery on the Mirror.

Spellweaver Helix will not trigger off spells played from a Panoptic Mirror. Read the card, it only triggers whenever a *card* is played. That means no copies of spells.

[Tempe]

The main reason I've been building up to a Control/Combo deck is that this deck isn't nearly as fast as some of the other striaght combo decks int he format, meaning there would be basically no reason to play this deck over another.

When you say random cards in the deck, can you give more examples? I built this deck up from scratch, so each card was put in for some kind of purpose. For instance, the Thoughtcast is almost always a U, 1U, or sometimes 2U. I only put in 1 because in the early game, it is usually more expensive than that. But, I needed more cheap draw that was actually card advantage, and Thoughtcast fit the bill nicely.

As for Intuition, Firebird is right. It works well because it serves 2 purposes. It is a draw engine with Accumulated Knowledge, and it is also a tutor to get cards into the graveyard for the Spellweaver. Beyond that, it can also fetch a 3x or 4x card if I really need it. I have always loved Intuition, so it was a natural fit in the deck. Even without AK it would still be in the deck.

The win condition is Tendrils, because there really is no way to stop the combo once you get 10 or so extra turns. Time Spiral on a Helix is close to infinite since you keep getting more mana and you are almost always able to draw into the card that triggers the helix. Amnesia will knock out a control opponent in the earlier game, since it would otherwise be too risky to Time Spiral. The game plan is basically to get Tendrils, Time Stretch, Mind's Desire/Time Spiral, and Amnesia on helixes, and once you get a Time Stretch, Spiral, or Mind's Desire on one, it is basically game from there. Even a Tendrils on one, with multiple triggers, will kil by itself.

I considered Bazaar as a draw engine, but since I only have 6 or so cards that _need_ to go in the graveyard, while Bazaar decks normally either don't care if other cards go to the graveyard or can dump 20 or so cards into the graveyard for benefit. I rarely need to discard cards after 1 or 2 Careful Studies. On average, I only pick up 1-2 of the powerful sorceries in my first hand, so a Bazaar would only serve as a one time thing before I start dumping cards I want to keep.

My goal for making this Aggro/Control is to get the 4 FoWs in there, and probably 4 Mana Drains. Stifle and other conditional counters may be added as necessary. More updates will come probably this week.

--Tempe