Can Chains of Mephistopheles be competitive?

[arkious]

Can Chains of Mephistopheles be competitive in Vintage? Is seems from previous discussions that Shahrazad has some difficulties being competitive, but in the spirit of driving your opponent to the brink of madness and beyond, let me introduce a chains deck that is designed to lock your opponent out of the game once they have zero cards in their hand. So, here is the deck list followed by some discussion:

Core:
4 x Chains of Mephistopheles
4 x Anvil of Bogardan
3 x Life from the Loam

Discard:
4 x Hymn to Tourach
4 x Duress
1 x Mind Twist
4 x Hypnotic Specter

Damage:
4 x The Rack
3 x Megrim

Browse and Abuse:
1 x Demonic Tutor
1 x Yawgmoth’s Will
1 x Memory Jar

Mana Accelerants:
1 x Black Lotus
1 x Mox Jet
1 x Mox Emerald
1 x Mox Diamond
1 x Sol Ring
4 x Dark Ritual

Land:
4 x Wasteland
1 x Stripmine
8 x Swamp
4 x Bayau

Possibilities
+ 2 x Gaea’s Blessing
+ 3 x Cursed Scroll
+ 1 x Regrowth
+ 4 x Cabal Ritual
+ 4 x Tangle Wire
+ 4 x Mishra’s Workshop
+ 4 x Null Rod
+ 3 or 4 x Chalice of the Void
+ 1 x Tolarian Academy
+ 1 x Mox Pearl, Mox Sapphire, Mox Ruby
- 3 x Megrim
- 4 x Hypnotic Specter
- 4 x Wasteland (+4 x Mishra's Factory or 3 x Blinkmoth Nexus)

So, the deck works like this. Get a Chains of Mephistopheles into play and get an Anvil of Bogardan into play. Then if you can get your opponent down to zero cards they never draw another card during the game because they draw 1 card during their draw phase then before drawing the second card for the Anvil, they discard 1 card to the Chains, then draw the second card for the Anvil, then discard the second card to the Anvil. Net gain: Zero cards. You break the symmetry for yourself by drawing the first card without a penalty and then instead of drawing the second card you use Life from the Loam to mill 3 cards and return Life from the Loam to your hand. You win by killing your opponent with The Rack or Megrim. Cursed Scroll can also work well and Gaea’s Blessing can keep you from milling yourself (this usually is not a problem so I took the Gaea’s Blessing out of the main deck). There are some other options for introducing more control like null rod or Chalice…

Any thoughts?

-Ark

[Nantuko Rice]

does chains and anvil stack/work together that way?

if you're able to force them into such a lock that quickly in which case they never draw a single card again, why bother with megrim or hippie? why not just use the hard lock and have the rack kill them? seems like your deck is lacking any permament removal that may hit the board before you pull the lock off.

[Demonic Attorney]

I see this question raised every few months or so by an enterprising Suicide or Fish player looking to increase the power level of cards at their disposal and possibly exploit a vulnerability in the more powerful deck archetypes.  Unfortunately, my response now is the same as it is has been for quite some time:  Not really.

Chains is nowhere near strong enough to level the playing field for Suicide Black against today's competitive decks.  Take for example the archetypes it would do best against: Slaver, Combo, and Gifts.  In each case, I still think the matchup is a losing proposition for Sui Black.  Chains functions to narrow card quantity, by shutting off drawing engines' ability generate net gain.  However, the inescapable reality is that Slaver and Gifts can trump everything in your deck with one card:  Tinker.  There is nothing in your entire deck that will save you from a resolved Tinker, so Slaver and Gifts don't need to rely on card advantage, where card power will suffice.  Their one Tinker will defeat your entire strategy.  As for combo, when I used to play Long and TPS, I routinely won through Chains of Mephistopheles when I encountered it.  If a combo player manages their resources effectively, cutting down on the number of cards they can draw won't really hinder them.  Most of the time, a combo deck burns through a few "chaff" cards in finding the storm generators anyway.  Discarding those superfluous cards to Chains doesn't really change anything.

And of course, other decks like Cookie Monster, Stax, Fish, and to a lesser extent Dragon care about Chains even less.  Card advantage through supplemental draw engines isn't even an integral part of their main strategy to begin with, so Chains doesn't significantly disrupt those decks at all. 

I understand the principles behind the Anvil/Chains lock, but honestly that strategy is way too slow to safely rely on.  By the time you can wear someone's hand size down to the point where your lock becomes salient, even the decks whose strategies Chains has a significant effect on will have beaten you.  The format's power level has quite simply trascended this strategy. 

[GrandpaBelcher]

Yeah, they're always tempting, but everyone plays around them.

If you're going to use them, I'd at least recommend you use Dark Confidant as well.  He allows you to draw cards (because his ability puts them straight into your hand, they're not affected by Chains), meaning you have a hand full of cards and spells to use, while your opponent has pretty much nothing.  If you're worried about Tinker, then, you can use Shadow of Doubt.

[President Skroob]

I like Chains, but I'd have to agree with the above that, as good as it looks on paper, people can just play around it. You're looking at both an Anvil and a Chains to establish the lock, because an Anvil alone is dangerous and a Chains alone can be played around without too much difficulty.

If you want to still go for it, I do have a couple of suggestions.

First, I would echo some of the sentiments above. Megrim isn't very good, and it's expensive to boot. Think of Stax. Once they establish a lock, it doesn't matter how they win, but their win is just a certainty over time, which will probably come down to swinging with Welders 20 times. Drop Megrim and add Dark Confidant, as Dark Confidant will both give you a clock and also supply card advantage through the card disadvantage that exists in Chains, thus making your lock not quite symmetrical. With the win condition of Dark Confidant, I'd also feel safe dropping The Rack for a better card. The Rack is damage, but its once again unnecessary, and you can use those slots to better protect your game.

I can see why you would run Life from the Loam, but I also think that you should either round out your splash better or drop Life for Crucible of Worlds. Life is uncounterable over time, but Crucible doesn't keep stealing your draw. If you start sacrificing your draws for Life from the Loam, you're giving up board control that you're really going to be struggling to hang onto in the first place.

On the topic of board control... you need more of it. With such a quick metagame in Vintage right now, you need to start disrupting early and keep up that disruption. Mind Twist can be a good bomb, but watch out for the Misdirection or you'll be shooting yourself in the face. Hymn to Tourach is a similar case. You might try for Unmask, but I'm not positive on that one. Mesmeric Fiend can be pretty useful, and if you decide to run a combination of Duress, Unmask, and Mesmeric Fiend than you're about at the critical point of always knowing what's in your opponent's hand, which is when Cabal Therapy becomes really solid.

Since you're running essentially a black prison deck, tutors are going to help you make that prison tick. At least add the Vampiric Tutor, if not Imperial Seal as well.

Hypnotic Specter can be slow. He is good once you've established control, but early on your mana is better spent playing threats that affect the current gamestate rather than the gamestate next turn at the earliest. Late game he will keep them off their hand once your other disruption spells are hanging out in the graveyard, so he's not without merit, but I'd personally cut down the number that you're running.

And lastly, since you're running so few artifacts, Null Rod would probably be quite solid, as would Chalice. Coupled with Dark Rituals, it's a good way to ensure you won't just get combo-punched in the face early on too often. I see you have Tangle Wire on your list of possibilities, and that might be pretty good as well. Experiment around a bit, but make sure to be testing against explosive decks to ensure that you can contain them early on, or you're going to have a hard time surviving the metagame.

[Gort32]

I've been poking around with a similar deck design for some time now but in the end every tweak that I make just pushes it a little bit closer to Stax.  Eventually I got to the point where I just picked up Stax and called it a day.

To start, Anvil is just bad if you don't have Chains as well.  Slaver and Gifts would LOVE to get an extra card each turn *and* be able to dump one card into the graveyard each turn.  You are playing right into their gameplan.  The Rack and Megrim are the same way - they blow if you don't already have the rest of your lock down on the table. Unlike Stax, a deck like this (mine to) just doesn't do anything with a single lock component - it needs multiple in order to be effective at all. 

This deck also lacks any endgame.  If you get an awesome hand you can drop your lock quickly and that's great, but if the game goes for longer than a couple of turns you aren't going to have an answer for all of the stuff that your opponent has done in the meantime.  They are going to be able to prevent you from doing your thing better than you will be able to prevent them from doing theirs.  Given that you have Green/Black, Pernicious Deed can go a long way toward resetting the board back down to a level that you may be able to manage.

Yes...Dark Confidant...you need a draw engine, he's one with legs.  Cabal Therapy may be helpful in offing the little bugger if you get too low on life.  Top may not be horrible either if you do decide not to go with Null Rod to improve card quality.

On a related note to card quality, once you have your ideal lock down on the board you are still going to take forever to finish the job as you have a ton of discard that will be useless at that point.  Zombie Infestation may be of use here - dump those now-useless cards for a few critters that can finish the job.  Zombie Infestation helps against those scrub aggro decks a bit as well.  You will need to dump Megrim of course though.

If you can fit them in, Elvish Spirit Guides can help accelerate your mana a bit.

In my deck I also ran Nether Void - I cna't say that it would be useful for you here but you might want to give it a try.

[Purple Hat]

your list isn't how I'd attack using chains in type 1.  Basically I look at chains as a way to wreck a metagame that is essentially entirely based on blue spells with the word draw on them.  That said, it turns out that blue spells that say "draw" on them are awefully FREAKIN good....and you can't play them....so, how does the theoretical chains deck get around that?

considering that the majority of type 1 decks play something like

4 brainstorm
4 other draw spells
1 ancestral
sometimes other draw

I think the problem is you're never gonna be as consistent or fast as the other decks until you can find a way to replace those cards. 


oh...also gifts and fof don't say draw on them and neither does merchant scroll.  ultimately you can slow someone's development with chains, but your deck also has to deploy and develop fast enough that they can't just fire off gifts and win the game right now.

[Twaun007]

your list isn't how I'd attack using chains in type 1.  Basically I look at chains as a way to wreck a metagame that is essentially entirely based on blue spells with the word draw on them.  That said, it turns out that blue spells that say "draw" on them are awefully FREAKIN good....and you can't play them....so, how does the theoretical chains deck get around that?

considering that the majority of type 1 decks play something like

4 brainstorm
4 other draw spells
1 ancestral
sometimes other draw

I think the problem is you're never gonna be as consistent or fast as the other decks until you can find a way to replace those cards. 


oh...also gifts and fof don't say draw on them and neither does merchant scroll.  ultimately you can slow someone's development with chains, but your deck also has to deploy and develop fast enough that they can't just fire off gifts and win the game right now.

Purple Hat nails why it isn't good with gifts only running 5 true draw spells, 4 Brainstorms and 1 Ancestral recall. Its for that reason that I cut them from my stax list, but if the Ak Intuition draw engine starts picking up again Chains might see some more play. You also have to look and see what other decks Chains would be good against. Its terrible vs stax, fish, and long can play around it with rituals.

Right now I would say that Chains is not really that threatening in our metegame.
 

[Anusien]

The other thing to remember is that primarily decks can ignore Chains of Mephistopheles.  Gifts the engine card doesn't draw, but it tutors, as does Merchant Scroll.  Most decks don't actually draw cards so much as they filter.  Brainstorm is about it, and Brainstorm will just get cast in response to Chains.  So I'm skeptical about the deck's ability to compete, speed-wise, with the draw spells that people do play.

[wuaffiliate]

There are also far too many ways to disable your "game winning" engine. Everyone and their brother is running bounce+counter magic, artifact and enchantment removal with many ways to access them without drawing any cards or even play them from the graveyard. As well you end up with a 2 card combo (chains and anvil) that does not win you the game. Instead you have a 3-4 card combo with no viable means to combine them in the time frame needed to make them an effective game ending unit.

[Special K]

wouldn't that decklose to a resolved dark confident? on that note why would you not want to include them as they they don't actually say draw a card?

[arkious]

Obviously, 4 Dark Confidants have to go into this deck--my only reservation before was that I disliked the picture.

Cabal Therapy is a bad option though since there are not enough creatures to make it worthwhile and with an average casting cost just over 1, I do not think I would ever want to sacrifice Bob. The Megrims have to come out for sure, and the Hippies probably have go as well since they are too slow. I like the inclusion of Nether Void, but when I have tried that before on a few occasions before, it was just too slow to resolve. Null Rods have to go into the main deck and/or the sideboard, the question is just how many should go in (help would be appreciated on this). With the Megrims out and Bob in, almost every spell will cost 1 or 2, so Chalice of the Void has to be set for 0 or 3. Chalice for 3 is hard to do, but is it worth including Chalice in the main deck just to for Chalice for 0. In my opinion no, because most 0 cc spells are going to be artifacts so Null Rod such do the trick. Regretfully, Null Rod counters Cursed Scroll, which I was thinking of adding to deal damage in place of Megrim and wipe Welders from the board. The deck is still really shy on permanent removal, but Pernicious Deed would just destroy my deck given that all the permanents I am playing with have a cc of 2 or less. For mana acceleration, Elfish Spirit Guides are not bad, but what do you think of Cabal Rituals? Also, I am really want to stuff in 3 or 4 Tangle Wires to slow down my opponent, but to accelerate them out I would probably have to add 4 Mishra’s Workshops, if I do that, I might as well put in a Trinisphere, a few Welders, and call it Stax. Nevertheless, something like Sphere of Resistance would really help slow down my opponent, but there are not too many free slots. I need The Rack, or I have nothing to damage my opponent other than a Bob beatdown.

So, in conclusion, my revisions would look like this:

    -4 x Hypnotic Specter
    -3 x Megrim
    -1 x Memory Jar
    -1 x Wasteland

    +4 x Dark Confidant
    +3 x Null Rod (if this is too many please let me know)
    +1 x Regrowth (to make better use of the splash of green)
    +1 x Tolarian Academy (with the extra artifacts it can power up a early mind twist)

Any other suggestions?