Meloku's Crucible

[KDenz81]

When I first saw Crucible of Worlds I thought about a "Turbo Land" type of deck, but after I saw Meloku, I knew how I was going to milk the CoW.

Combo:

4X Meloku
4X Crucible of Worlds
2X Altar of Dementia
2X Gerrard's Wisdom
2X Lifegift
1X Fastbond
1X Zuran Orb

Utility:

2X Cunning Wish
1X Tinker
1X Time Walk
1X Worldly Tutor
1X Enlightened Tutor
1X Crop Rotation

Draw:

4X Accumulated Knowledge
4X Brainstorm
1X Ancestral Recall

Disruption:

4X Force of Will
4X Counterspell
2X Mana Drain
1X Tormod's Crypt

Land:

4X Tundra
4X Tropical Island
4X Flooded Strand
2X Windswept Heath
1X Mishra's Workshop
1X Strip Mine

Mana

1X Mox Sapphire
1X Mox Emerald



Basically the Combo works like this.  I get out Fastbond turn 1, I fetch out every land I can, I play Meloku and Crucible.  Lifegift, Gerrard's Wisdom, and Zorb keep me alive.  I return a land to my hand using Meloku and make a 1/1 flying illusion.  I play the land through Fastbond, I loose a life, but gain it back through either Lifegift or sac it to Zorb.  I play it from my graveyard through Crucible and Fastbond and make billions of 1/1 flyers.  If I can't kill you with damage, I get out Altar and deck you. 

Unlike some other decks I've come up with, this has two solid win conditions.  I've built and tested the deck already with Apprentice and it can win turn three, it did six out of ten times.

Any suggestions, comments, questions, feel free to post them.

Denz

[Necrologia]

When coming up with a new list it's almost always best to post how you'd run it optimally, not how you'd run it due to budget concerns. The lack of Lotus, only 2 Moxen, 2 Drains, unless you're aiming at some exact number of proxies there's no way this deck is built properly. Even then I'd almost certainly run Black Lotus over Time Walk or something in a deck like this.

On the combo itself: What's with the lifegain? Do you really need to waste 4 slots on dead draws early just to be able to deal 98150896125 damage instead of 20 or so? Outside of a massive Tog or Colossus or something, what aren't you going to be able to deal with 10 or so token critters? What about the Altars? They aren't going to help you at all until you've comboed out, before that they're a dead draw. If you really have to have a backup plan to deck them throw a Stroke of Genius in the side. You might end up wishing for it to get some gas going pre combo, or as a finisher once you've got Zorb+Fastbond+Crucible running.

The Manabase is a complete mess. You only run a handful of artifacts so the Workshop isn't going to be worth it. Rotating for it is cute but probably not worth a slot, you'll hate seeing it in your opening hand. As long as you're running 4x Crucible you might as well fit some Wastelands in. A basic or two seems prudent as well.

Ultimately the problem with this deck is that it's core combo is much too slow and awkward. What reason is there to run this deck with its 16 combo pieces, one of which is restricted, over another combo deck such as Sensei Sensei? Your deck runs comparable disruption, but less acceleration, less draw, and your individual combo pieces are often dead until you combo out. Not so of Future Sight, Top and Helm.

[andrewpate]

Accumulated Knowledge without Intuition is terrible, as are such gems as a single maindeck Tormod's Crypt and the random use of Altar of Dementia.

In short, this deck is trying to do way too many things and failing to do any of them well.  You are talking about assembling a combo capable of generating infinite life and mana, and using it to... set off a kill condition that has summoning sickness?  Cunning Wish for Stroke of Genius, as Necrologia says, is far better, as is just casting your deck and using Brain Freeze.  Necro, you are right to compare the deck to Sensei, and the comparison is devastating.

I am not totally opposed to the idea of Turboland, but it needs to be more focused.  Cut all the random lifegain and go to 4xMana Drain.  Add Fact or Fiction and Horn of Greed along with the off-color Moxes.  Get the jank out of the mana base and add black for tutoring.  The deck should focus on replaying fetchlands with Crucible to get a good U/G/b base going (Enlightened Tutor is not good enough to justify messing with white mana).  You need to pack at least 4 ways to get Fastbond instantly.  Then run Yawgmoth's Will and a up the number of Cunning Wishes for a Stroke of Genius kill, and you may consider maindecking Braingeyser as well, both as a tutor target to win immediately once you have infinite mana and as a jumpstart for the combo if you have a lot of lands but no gas.

Meloku is cute, but just too slow.