[deck discussion] Doomsday

[orgcandman]

I would like to preface this by saying that I have been looking at doomsday combo since before it was unrestricted, so I have had the pleasure of testing many different cards to try and make the deck more consistent. While I am no Meandeck Power-Gamers, I do believe that I have gotten good enough in my design and theory with respect to Doomsday to be able to offer some small nugget of insight on the basic goal of Doomsday that many people have missed.

One of the first things I learned when playing with doomsday is that the deck should be built so that doomsday is regarded as a "super tutor", not some incredibly wacky win condition. In fact, I believe that in some instances you could compare doomsday with bargain or necropotence in that you pay close to half of your life to find the 1 card you're missing and some support cards. Doomsday just doesn't put them in hand (which happens to be slightly less desirable). This is something I would consider as the first primacy when playing a Doomsday style combo deck.

One of the second things I learned playing doomsday is that it's just not viable if you have to pass the turn. It is imperative that you win on the turn that you are casting doomsday (if you cast it at all), or you are sunk. Your opponent simply has to play ancestral, deep analysis, or even gaea's blessing and you lose. Badly. I would consider this second of the primacies of Doomsday style combo.

Keeping these two rules in mind when building a deck, we need to evaluate the tools that help us to follow these rules.

One of the primary problems with doomsday is the violation of rule #2, or not passing the turn. This may have been caused by "fizzling" with regards to mana or draw spells. Whatever the cause, this is almost assuredly the worst thing that can happen to a doomsday build, after resolving doomsday. How then can we battle this?

Initial lists were using chromatic spheres to attempt to draw into the appropriate win conditions. However, this caused many problems with mana inconsistencies. The offender - 1 mana shy of the win. We need a card that put exactly what we needed into our hand for 1 mana, rather than 2 plus 1 filtered through a permanent. It was at this point that our T2 twiddle-desire build from Onslaught Block + Mirrodin revealed a bit of tech to allow us to essentially "go off" faster: Spoils of the Vault. A tutor for 1, we felt that this was one of the pieces lacking from the doomsday build that meandeck released.

What soon followed was a redesign of our build into a Spoils / Doomsday deck. The incredibly powerful tutor effect in spoils allowed us to play the deck as a tendrils build that aimed to win on turn 1 or 2. We found that by playing aggressively, we were able to power through even force of will.

Why then did we not play this deck at Waterbury, Myriad, and others? Simple, fear of playing through a sea of trinisphere made this deck a suboptimal metagame choice.

With the recent restriction of the 3sphere of doom, I decided to independantly pick-up the deck, and start working on it. We left off with a build looking as such:

//Disruption
4 Unmask
4 Duress

//Tutorage, filterage, goodage
2 Lim-Dul's Vault
3 Spoils of the Vault
1 Chromatic Sphere
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Brainstorm
1 Hurkyl's Recall

//Cards that say I win
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Mind's Desire
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Timetwister
1 Darksteel Colossus
3 Doomsday
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Beacon of Destruction

//mana acceleration of doom
4 Dark Ritual
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
5 Moxen (of the A/B/U kind)
4 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Island

The sideboard will not be included because I feel that proper sideboarding for this involves learning your metagame inside and out.

At first glance, the deck seems like nothing special. Some mana acceleration, some tutor power, some card draw, and win conditions via storm. Typical, no?

You'll notice that this build runs no gush. In testing, it was too often dead in hand to be useful. Were the island count higher it would be desirable, but with the manabase the way it is, gush just isn't supportable, as you're usually winning before you have a second island on the board. As it costs 4 to get 2 cards, you'd never want to hardcast it. As such it was cut. It just wasn't fast enough to keep the combo going.

Knowing how to effectively play the deck is a requisite, as it is a must to play aggressively. I've found that playing this deck aggresively can involve a few things. The first is balls out, dropping mana acceleration, tutoring up card-draw, playing card draw, tutoring up more mana acceleration into more card-draw and then tutoring up the win. More often than not, this strategy works, but is frought with peril, as the amount of library depletion you will face will involve comboing that turn, or dying. If you're going for this strategy, you are basically saying, "I hope you don't have force" because this deck wins in one turn, or loses in one turn.

The other style of aggressive play involves a turn 1 disruption spell, followed up turn 2 with the aggresive play. It can even wait a second turn to drop a second disruption spell before going for the win on turn 3.

One important thing to note is that the longer the game goes on, the less likely this deck is to win. I've rarely won past turn 4, although it's been known to happen. This is, I believe, a departure from the Meandeck build which could, in fact, wait a few more turns before going for the win, as it ran unmasks, and forces, which allowed it to combo out under the protection a reactive card, rather than a proactive card.

The most important thing to learn this deck is the gold fish. This deck wants to get 8 spells with a tutor in hand and enough to use it and a tendrils, or it wants a spoils, a doomsday, and enough mana acceleration to use them.

The rest of the information about the deck is almost identical to the meandeck build.

Why post this here, then? This is important: Because I think doomsday has so much untapped potential that is just being ignored. It's so fast, it's an incredibly powerful tutor, filtering away all the chaff you don't need for a particular match, and it allows a good player to really excercise his/her playskill.

Cards that I have tested but ultimately cut and resoning:

Cabal Ritual - Here is a big sticking point where meandeck's build and my build differ. Spoils allows me to use 1 of the 3 black to find another ritual, or a lotus, or another accelerant if I really need it. I find though, that I'm usually just not in dire need of it. As it typically only turns 1B into BBB until I'm in the middle of comboing off (at which point I usually have plenty of acceleration in play) it just didn't seem like it was pulling it's weight.

Land grant, + "grant" mana base - Honestly, I thought this was going to be amazing and was very let down. Although it would up the storm count, it was never very good because it turned the mana base into a house of cards. This also was a time where I was experimenting with a slight red splash so that I could cast a beacon, AND run wheel of fortune. Suffice it to say, I quickly dropped this approach.

Rebuild - I had cut this because it had been slightly slower than hurkyl's, but honestly it's still damned good in here.

Defense Grid - This was just getting to be too slow for my tastes. That having been said, in a control heavy metagame, this may not be a bad card to run, as it's a must-counter, and allows you to reliably go off.

Draw7s in general - They were just getting to be a little too dangerous. I still included jar and twister, but that's because they're draw7 for 2U rather than off color or costing 4.

These are just my observations, and thoughts on the deck, as I've been playing it off and on for quite some time now and felt that I had enough of an understanding to write a little centerpiece for discussion.

Thanks,
Aaron

PS: I tried not to make this a "primer" or anything, but after proof reading it started looking that way. I'm sorry if it looks like I'm trying to write my own primer on doomsday. I'm merely presenting my current build, as well as many observations and experiences I've had with the deck.

[Necrologia]

Excellent post. How have the Spoils been working for you? Meandeck Tendrils  managed to kill itself fairly often with Spoils, and that deck ran 4 Tendrils main. You seem a little light on win conditions yourself, so I can easily see you removing them all, or simply dying after naming Tendrils. I see the Synergy between Doomsday and the Spoils, giving you a 1 mana black cantrip, but if all you ever get with Spoils is Ritual, Cabal Ritual gives you the same accel with no risk of death.

Also, the manbase looks a little light. Deathlong runs 11 land, while your build runs only 9. You also lack ESGs, Petal, and Chrome Mox. Has mulliganing due to no usable mana been a major problem with the deck?

[orgcandman]

Excellent post. How have the Spoils been working for you? Meandeck Tendrils  managed to kill itself fairly often with Spoils, and that deck ran 4 Tendrils main.

The beauty of spoils is that it's not just a tutor for win conditions, but a tutor for anything you may need "now". I have, on occasion, found myself dying to spoils for an unrestricted card, but honestly, it's won me more games than it's killed me, by leaps and bounds.

You seem a little light on win conditions yourself, so I can easily see you removing them all, or simply dying after naming Tendrils.

You are correct that the build is light on win conditions. I have, again on occasion, removed almost all, and even a few times, all of my win conditions. That having been said, more often than not, I'll have enough gas to just spoils for a tendrils or a doomsday and win immediately.

While on this subject, I'd like to address an important issue, and that is the inclusion of beacon. For a while, I debated cutting it all together. In fact, if you look at the Meandeck primer, they also seemed like they were debating whether or not to cut it. In the end having a card that can win off a cold stack (IE: you broke rule #2 and passed the turn) is just too good not to include.

I see the Synergy between Doomsday and the Spoils, giving you a 1 mana black cantrip, but if all you ever get with Spoils is Ritual, Cabal Ritual gives you the same accel with no risk of death.

You're correct if all I ever got was ritual. I don't have any one card or even group of cards that I spoils for more often. I would have to say the tendacy towards Tendrils, brainstorm, and ritual is probably the most often, although I've spoilsed for almost everything in the deck (don't laugh. I've chained 3 spoils into each other for a turn 1 win),

Also, the manbase looks a little light. Deathlong runs 11 land, while your build runs only 9. You also lack ESGs, Petal, and Chrome Mox. Has mulliganing due to no usable mana been a major problem with the deck?

Actually, I find that the deck runs beautifully on a light amount of mana. If I could run even less land, I probably would, as that would fit in more more spells.
On mulliganning, it will become apparent that mulling happens pretty often. This is NOT, however, due to any kind of mana inconsistency, but more due to the fact that you may end up with too many dead cards. I find that with 1 mana source, I can usually draw up to 3 cards, which puts me in perfect range for finding another mana source to keep things going. The machine is rather tight. However, in this build, Beacon, DSC, and Memory jar are the three biggest contenders for dead weight in the deck.

With all that having been said, I'd like to address the lack of ESGs and Chrome Mox first.

ESG was originally tested but really sucked. It generated no on color mana, and didn't touch the storm count.

Chrome mox, seemed excellent in theory, but the cost of losing 2 cards in hand was a great way to end a turn. (Meaning, it ate business spells way to often to be useful).

Lotus petal is an interesting debate. I put the petal, as well as mana vault in and out of builds in different situations. Both petal AND mana vault are great boosts of mana, as you can easily achieve your goal of dropping a desire, a bargain, or multiple cantrips off a very small investment. Why are they lacking in the current build then?

The DSC is actually sitting in the lotus petal slot. Although this sounds insane, I decided to start testing without the petal and WITH the DSC due to (in my opinion) the amount of combo hate about to start going all around. Petal suffers from most of the hate (chalice on 0, pillar, etc) and I felt it would behoove myself to start testing without it. I'm still torn on the issue, and I may end up switching back. I'm merely providing my most current list. By all means, I would definately reccommend testing both with and without petal in this slot.

Mana vault is another card I mentioned, and honestly I have trouble finding the correct slot for it. Mostly, it sits in place of the second lim-dul's vault. However, LDV is so good here, that I honestly don't like going to less than 2. However, if you're trying to get more acceleration, by all means add them, as I'm not done evolving my Doomsday builds yet.

Thanks,
Aaron