Hey guys,
Wanted your feedback and suggestions for improvements on this deck, which i have built and piloted to 11th place in a 200 people tournament in France last week end, losing to oath and painter, winning to merchant/drains * 2, oath*2, ichorid, and flash.
First of all a decklist.
// Draw
4 Dark Confidant
3 Dimir Cutpurse
// Toolbox
3 Trinket Mage
2 Sensei's divining top
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Tormod's Crypt
// Disruption
4 Painter's Servant
4 Pyroblast
4 Red Elemental Blasts
4 Duress
// Alt win
2 Grindstone
// Broken
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth's Will
// Mana
1 Black Lotus
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring
1 Strip Mine
2 Wastelands
4 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic island
2 Badlands
// Sideboard
4 Leyline of the Void // flash, icho
2 Tormod's Crypt // flash reveillark, icho
2 Shattering Spree // shops
3 Viashino Heretic // shops
1 Aether Spellbomb // tinker.deck, oath
1 Pithing Needle // slaver, shops, flash, icho
2 Umezawa's jitte // random.deck
I've been playing with deeznoughts for a while, then switched to a white splash instead of green with grunts. I like the deck but i find it lacks a combo finish to end the game quickly in suitations that are desperate or could become ricky.
The deck basically incorporates the draw engine of Sullivan Sollution (confidants + cutpurses), a toolbox trinket mage engine, and a painter package of 8 blasts + 2 grindstones for a combo finish.
The decks wins most of the time in beatdown mode, controlling the board with blasts and outdrawing the opponent via confidants/cutpurses. The grindstones are a nice alternate win
.
Some notes on the card choices, skipping the obvious ones :
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Cutpurse. The idea is that confidant by itself is not enough as a draw engine for an aggro control deck. If it gets countered or you don't see him, you generally end up outdrawn and lose. Cutpurse is just awesome in a control/combo matchup. his only problem is he sucks in an aggro matchup, which pairing him with servants nicely solves by allowing for quick and dirty blocker removal (blasts). Everytime he connects, Cutpurse creates the CA of an ancestral recall. I realize it's not the same to have opponent discard and draw yourself, yet it is very rare to lose a game where cutpurse connects multiple times.
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Trinket+Toolbox. The toolbox is limited here to tormod and EE, with needle and spellbomb moved to the sideboard (leaving no answer to DSC maindeck). Without brainstorms, I like to pla 2 Senseis, and 2 Grindstones make the combo win happen more often without relying on the trinket tutoring.
- The
disruption suite. 4 duress, and 8 blasts. Blasts are just awesome with painter. They allow you to force the way of a drawer in play, remove a blocker, get rid of annoyances (null rod, dreadnoughts etc.). Not much more to say about them, the deck is built to abuse them.
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Strips. 3 waste effects are there, more to get rid of bazaars and libraries than really to be meant as a mana disruption engine.
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No brainstorms. I tried a version with -1 top, -1 grindstone, -1 cutpurse, -1 blast, + 4 brainstorm, but it lacked the punch of this one. The thing is, unlike in control decks, there are very few cards that you don't wanna play in this deck and would want to get away with bs+fetch. no DSCs, storm cards, bounce cards or anything that would come up at a time not appropriate. Most of the time what you'll draw will be useful, making brainstorms mostly interesting to get an extra mana in the earl game or remove one in the late game. I prefer not to include them, although i would understand disagreement with this decision.
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No FOWs. I know they're good with paitner, but as long as he's not there, there's way not enough blue in the deck to support them, especially considering cutpurses will go out in a number of matchups.
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No basics lands. Cruci+waste is hardly palyed anymore, often even stax only features 1 crucible. Leaves magus of the moon, but he's not so much a problem for the deck, which has loads of artifacts and can get rid of the magus via painter+blast. Hence, no basics. Yeah.
Quick matchup analysis:
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Flash: probably the most difficult matchup, due to no FOWs. Means no turn 0 disruption, max 1 turn 1 disruption and 2 turn 2 disruptions, which is often not enough in the matchup. If you can survive the first turn, it probably means you got a confidant online (because no disruption + no confidant turn 1 generally means mulligan) and from there things can be good, with an accessible tormod as an extra disruption. Yet, probably the worse matchup for the deck, hence the 7 SB cards.
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Oath : 8 pyroblasts for tyrants (or for oath once painter is online), maindeck tormod and cutpurses make this a rather good matchup. The only problem is that you can't mill him until you have a tormod online or a blast for krosan.
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Ichorid : a reasonnable matchup G1, and a pretty good matchup G2/3s, thanks to the maindeck strips+tormod, and the 7 sideboard cards that provide a wide array of solutions, + the added effect of painter + blasts which can get rid of narcos or bazars.
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Drains/slaver/Tinker.deck: main problem here is DSC, for which you must board in the SB spellbomb. otherwise, the key here is to resolve a drawer. Control tends to suffer from an online confidant/cutpurse :p.
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Workshops : the question here is whether you can resolve a painter or not. If yes, you suddenly have access to 8 disenchants for R, which often is too much to deal with for shops. Without painter, proceed to G2
.
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Fish/Deeznought: you have a better draw engine in that you have the extra 3 cutpurses. The goal is to clear the way with blasts and have them connect a couple of times, from there things should roll to your advantage.
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Control Painter: not too sure about this matchup, I lack testing experience for it. Should be fun.
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Random. vs random.deck (taiga, goblins, aggro, suicide etc.), the main goal is to assemble the combo and take off. SB jittes help in aggro matchups thanks to your 14 creatures.
Looking forward to your suggestions on how to improve the pile
.
