[Deck] Null Endurance

[netherspirit]

Hey all! Having seen the visual spoiler for Planar Chaos (http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=39399&d=1169268976), a few cards have really caught my eye and got me thinking about new deck possibilities. One, which I know has been discussed already, is Null Profusion:

Null Profusion
 
Enchantment
Skip your draw step.
Whenever you play a card, draw a card.
Your maximum hand size is two.

So yeah, that's it! A black Recycle. Anyway, without further ado, I give you Null Endurance!


Mana Base:
1 Black Lotus
5 Moxen (the good ones obviously)
1 Sol Ring
4 Scrubland
4 Plains
4 Swamp
2 Flooded Strand
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Polluted Delta
1 Windswept Heath

Key Cards:
2 Null Profusion
4 Academy Rector
1 Words of Worship

Disruption:
2 Funeral Charm
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress
4 Orim's Chant

Board Control:
3 Porphyry Nodes
1 Ghostly Prison
1 Balance

Tutors:
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Entomb

Acceleration:
4 Dark Ritual

The Win:
1 Test of Endurance

Well that's the deck!

You may have noticed the deck uses another Planar Chaos card; Porphyry Nodes. If you don't know what it does, here it is:

Porphyry Nodes
 
Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep, destroy the creature with the least power. It can't be regenerated. If two or more creatures are tied for least power, you choose one.
When there are no creatures in play, sacrifice Porphyr Nodes.

So, the deck! The idea is to get Null Profusion out so you can cycle through your deck, then drop a second one and Words of Worship to start gaining stupid amounts of life (which is VERY easy with this deck), and eventually win with Test of Endurance.

How do you get all these enchantments out though?

Well, there are 8 ways to get rid of Academy Rector: 4 Cabal Therapy, 3 Porphryr Nodes and 1 Balance; plus Entomb to tutor for Cabal Therapy, so it's actually very easy to cheat them into play. You can also hard cast most of them with relative ease anyway.

So, card explanations:

Null Profusion - All your cards become cantrips! Drop an additional one and you can go absolutely insane.

Academy Rector - Cheats your enchantments into play.

Words of Worship - Provides you with a ridiculous amount of life gain.

Funeral Charm - Spot removal and, more importantly, instant speed discard. A very handy card.

Cabal Therapy - Sac outlet for Academy Rector.

Orim's Chant - Protects me from creatures and stops their spells; it pretty much works like Time Walk. It is great for protecting me during their turn or protecting my spells during my turn. I often save one for the turn before I win (i.e. when I have 50+ life and Test of Endurance in play), so that they can't stop me at the last moment.

Porphyry Nodes - I don't have much defense against creatures, but this stops them quite easily, kills my Rectors, AND is cheap to cast, therefore making it quite nice with Null Profusion.

Ghostly Prison - Cheap creature prevention. I may replace it with Moat or Equipoise, though.

Entomb - Tutors for Cabal Therapy or just thins my library.

Test of Endurance - An easy to achieve win condition. Catches opponents by surprise; which is always quite handy.

Well, that's it! The only real problem I've found with the deck is its lack of a draw engine besides Null Profusion; I just don't know what to use though.

I'm considering a sideboard that goes something like:

3 Pithing Needle
1 Funeral Charm
4 Rebuff the Wicked (Planar Chaos)
etc

Rebuff the Wicked
 
Instant
Counter target spell that targets a permanent you control.

Any thoughts on that?

Anyway, that's the deck and possible sideboard. I obviously haven't had much chance to test this properly as Planar Chaos isn't out yet, so it's mainly been MWS with a friend.

So, any thoughts or comments? Help would be much appreciated!

Hope you like the deck guys!

  netherspirit

[Vegeta2711]

You need to run Yawgmoth's Bargain in any deck that runs Academy Rector. It gives you so many automatic game-wins no matter how bad the situation, it's amazing. That's probably my main issue actually, this looks like a weaker Rector Trix deck. That had Therapy + FOW and could consistently win the same turn it fetched Bargain even with no hand and little to no mana. Can this deck at least win the same turn it drops Profusion consistently?

Also, other than being cute, I can't see how Test of Endurance is better than just winning via Tendrils.

[BruiZar]

I can see how null profusion is powerful. I just do not agree with words of worship because it requires mana to activate. You gain nothing but life which is a useless parameter in vintage if you do not play ,well, lich..

I am not really sold on rector because he's pretty expensive.

nights whisper
conjurers ban
Cruel Bargain / infernal contract
perhaps?

[Moxlotus]

So, do you fold to Chalice@1?  Or SoR?  How do you deal with artifact disruption?

[netherspirit]

So, do you fold to Chalice@1?  Or SoR?  How do you deal with artifact disruption?

Dammit, I only just noticed Chalice@1 What do you mean by SoR?

As for artifact disruption; I'm assuming you mean cards that disrupt your artifacts, such as Energy Flux and Null Rod. I haven't found them to be hugely problematic yet.

I'm thinking of maybe running Vindicate to get around the Chalice problem; how does that seem?

Thanks for the input so far guys!

Oh, and I haven't got Bargain in here because during testing I found it just wasn't at all necessary, I will retry it again though. I think I will have to try the Tendrils kill out; maybe take away Words of Worship and Test of Endurance to add Yawgmoth's Will and Tendrils?

[Hydra]

Artifact disruption are artifacts that mess with your deck's ability to function, like Tangle Wire, Chalice, Sphere of Resistance (SoR for short), Trinisphere, etc.  All combo decks need a way to handle those cards, particularly mana-hungry ones like yours.

[netherspirit]

Ooops, my bad. Hmm, in that case I guess my only option at the moment is to make them ditch them before they can hit play. What cards would be worth adding for them? I don't really see that there are many options availabe for black and white other than discard cards, Vindicate or Equipoise.

[lordmayhem]

Pardon me if this idea is horrible, but I think you could benefit from attempting to cheat Null Profusion into play with Replenish. Additionally, you could run a dredge/bazaar engine and run 4 Null Profusion and 4 Recycle. It certainly sounds like it would make getting two into play much less of a chore.

Also I would definitely go for the Tendrils kill instead of a flimsy, but I must admit cute way of winning. In which case, having two in play will just gain you insane card advantage, as opposed to gaining 5 and a card.

[netherspirit]

I like your thinking lordmayhem.

My only concern with using a dredge engine is that I may lose my Replenishes, though.

[lordmayhem]

You make a valid point.

I would suggest Intuition, but we'd be dipping into three colours at this point.

[Implacable]

Hmmmm...  The problem with these decks is that they are fond of cool ideas but aren't actuallly any good.  They lack both the speed of comb and the disruption of control.  I'd take advantage of the fact that there are a total of 4 playable and absurd Rituals and go from there. 

Disruption:
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress
2 Shattering Spree
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast

Engine:
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
2 Seething Song
11 SoLoMoxMaLi
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Badlands
2 Swamp
1 Mountain

Broken Stuff:
4 Null Profusion
2 Empty the Warrens
2 Tendrils of Agony
2 Gamble?
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Yawgmoth's Will

The thing about using lots of Rituals is that it forces this question to be asked; what do you do if you just have a lot of Rituals?  The answer conveniently presents itself in the form of Null Profusion; you draw into business using your mana production.  This elegant synergy is backed up by a good set of disruption, with a full set of discard and utility to back it up (Who's going to counter a red Ritual; nobody!  Then, of course, they find out you have a Blast, and they are greatly saddened).  Now, I'm not going to run out there and say that this deck is any good, but it is a lot better than Test of Endurance.dec; that is, bar none, the worst win condition that I've ever seen in Vintage.

[OfficeShredder]

11 SoLoMoxMaLi

Alright, this is getting ridiculous.

1 sol ring
1 black lots
5 moxen
1 mana crypt

that leaves Li to stand for three different cards.... and I have no idea what they are

[Implacable]

11 SoLoMoxMaLi

Alright, this is getting ridiculous.

1 sol ring
1 black lots
5 moxen
1 mana crypt

that leaves Li to stand for three different cards.... and I have no idea what they are

SolBlaPetEmJetPeaRubSapCryVau lLion.

Feel any better?  I wasn't writing that abbreviation to be cryptic or pedantic; I was saving time.  You should know what those cards are, because they are all, with the possible exception of Lion's Eye, standard issue in a combo deck.

[zeus-online]

11 SoLoMoxMaLi

Alright, this is getting ridiculous.

1 sol ring
1 black lots
5 moxen
1 mana crypt

that leaves Li to stand for three different cards.... and I have no idea what they are

SolBlaPetEmJetPeaRubSapCryVau lLion.

Feel any better?  I wasn't writing that abbreviation to be cryptic or pedantic; I was saving time.  You should know what those cards are, because they are all, with the possible exception of Lion's Eye, standard issue in a combo deck.

Urh i didn't get it either, and where's mana vault? Please type in Solomoxen and leave the rest out of it

/Zeus

[Moxlotus]

Everybody knows that Lion's Eye diamond is LED--not Li

[brianpk80]

The deck needs optimizing but it is definitely clever.
Although I'm not sure that the white Drop of Honey is going to benefit you as much in Vintage as it would in other formats, its utility as a Rector guillotine is elegant enough that in a Fish heavy environment or one with many creatures, it may be worth a maindeck or sideboard slot(s). 

Test of Endurance is what we'd call a "win-more" win-condition.  That simply means it's a card that will "win" you a game only when you've already essentially won.  If you're at 50 life and you're drawing cards like crazy, you should be able to win with anything, possibly even a Mountain Goat.  Instead of dedicating slots to win-more conditions, your best bet is to find a win that has dual-purpose: something that can give you the win but can also be used for another purpose in a less optimal circumstance.  Tendrils of Agony (best win condition in Vintage) fits this role quite well because it permits you to kill the opponent but can also double as life gain in an emergency.  Even though you don't appear to be running blue (which you may want to consider, since it grants the best combo skeletons along with black), Cunning Wish is another ideal win condition (with Brain Freeze/Stroke of Genius in sideboard) because you can use it when necessary to fetch an alternate target like an Echoing Truth, Mystical Tutor, Fact or Fiction, etc.  Test of Endurance doesn't have that kind of flexibility (although I can think of many more suboptimal win conditions).  Don't be afraid to try new things and discuss them here even if they fail; this is the Improvement Forum and it's the proper venue for novel and untested ideas like yours.  Ideally, the criticism you get here should be honest but not harsh.

I like Mack's blueprint of a Ritual based build, even if using 14 Rituals is excessive.  That may be a good direction to explore because not only are the Rituals insane after the Null enchantment resolves, but they also give you the early mana boost to fuel one out (or a Rector) early.  With Cabal Therapies and so many expensive enchantments, the Replenish + Bazaar of Baghdad route is also fertile.  My criticism there would be that if you do that, you might as well be playing Replenish.dec.  There was a formidible list floating around a while back based on Replenishing a Form of the Dragon, Solitary Confinement, and Yawgmoth's Bargain (which you definitely need in here).  It used Intuition, Bazaars, and Squee, Goblin Nabob as both its draw and combo engine and heavy countermagic.  It may be hard justifying the focus on Null Profusion when that already established deck may be strictly superior.  However, with work, the black base of your deck (Cabal Therapy, etc.) may give some leverage to create something different but comparable.

On the Rebuff the Wicked question, the answer is definitely no. 

Good luck.

[Implacable]

It may be hard justifying the focus on Null Profusion when that already established deck may be strictly superior. 

That's what I was trying to do with the Ritual.dec version.  The thing is, if you build this deck in a previous shell, it will just be inferior.  I think that the very best thing about Null Profusion is that you don't really care about graveyard hate.  If you add Replenish + Bazaar, then all of a sudden those Leylines that everybody and their dog and their dog's fleas are packing became useful against you, which is A Bad Thing.  The fact that you draw a card regardless of your spell's resolution is very, very powerful.  That Rituals could simultaneously provide cards and mana is insane, and should be taken advantage of.

[netherspirit]

Thanks for the feedback guys!!!

So much information to work through here!

I'm definitely going to go for a Tendrils win. But I still like the whole Rector idea because it's easy to set off and fairly hard to disrupt. Any thoughts on ways I could improve the deck while keeping this aspect?

[wethepeople]

I'm definitely going to go for a Tendrils win. But I still like the whole Rector idea because it's easy to set off and fairly hard to disrupt. Any thoughts on ways I could improve the deck while keeping this aspect?

Academy Rector is unbelievably easy to disrupt since so many sideboards currently run Leyline of the Void, which stops Rector from ever reaching the GY, futhermore preventing you from RFGing it to activate it's ability.

[Dr_Tongue]

 If you decided to add U to the mix , any cards that drew you cards (in addition to the Profusion card), would be Card Advantage. Cards with a flashback of drawing cards could prove advantageous under the Null Profusion like the ability to flashback Cabal. Gush would be another nice non mana investment for cards.
 While the deck may be new and in the works, I still fail to see how it's any better than just using Bargain. After all ,Recycle didn't see play in Rector decks, and I don't think the color change will make it anymore powerful than it was.
Good luck though

[brianpk80]

If you decided to add U to the mix , any cards that drew you cards (in addition to the Profusion card), would be Card Advantage. Cards with a flashback of drawing cards could prove advantageous under the Null Profusion like the ability to flashback Cabal. Gush would be another nice non mana investment for cards.
 While the deck may be new and in the works, I still fail to see how it's any better than just using Bargain. After all ,Recycle didn't see play in Rector decks, and I don't think the color change will make it anymore powerful than it was.
Good luck though

Bargain is definitely the better card here, but the problem is that it's restricted.  With Academy Rectors, Bargain should (almost) always be the prime target.  What I see Null Profusion doing is giving the opportunity to run as many as four "mini-Bargains" in addition to YB itself.  The biggest problem with Recycle was its color; no one wants green to be the basis color of a combo deck.  In black, the mechanic opens up some new doors that should, at the very least, prove more viable than Recycle.dec, even if the end product isn't strong enough to compete with the best decks out there.

-BPK

[Anusien]

Also, other than being cute, I can't see how Test of Endurance is better than just winning via Tendrils.

Plus, you don't run enough of the good acceleration to make a kill without Null Endurance/Bargain viable.  I'd cut Entomb, 2 Funeral Charm, Test of Endurance, Words of Worshop, 3 Porphyry Nodes, 1 Ghostly Prison, Balance, and 4 Orim's Chant for Necro, Bargain, Will, 4 Cabal Ritual, 2 Tendrils, and 5 other cards.  I suggest a blue splash for 4 Brainstorm, Ancestrall Recall, Time Walk and Mind's Desire, with SB bounce.  (To make room there I'd cut into the Tendrils or the Imperial Seal).

Essentially, you're a combo deck so damnit act like one.  There's no need for crappy board control cards like Balance, Propaganda or Drop of Honey when you should be focusing on just winning the gamen.