A type 1 oddity

[Anonymous]

This is the deck I've been working on for over two years, ever since somebody introduced me to the Academy/MOM archetype that was around before it got almost completely banned and restricted (unless otherwise noted, there is 1 copy of each card). I win with it much more than I lose with it. I have, to date, only lost one match with this deck (out of the 10-20 I've played worthy of being mentioned), although I very frequently go 2-1 with this. All of the playtesting I get is online play, although I did play this deck once with the real cardboard and I won that match 2-1. Anyway, here's the deck:

Artifacts (11)
Scroll Rack
5 Moxen
Mox Diamond
Grim Monolith
Mana Vault
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring

Land (18)
Tolarian Academy
Strip Mine
2 City of Brass
4 Tundra
4 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island

Drawing and Searching (19)
Frantic Search
Stroke of Genius
Braingeyser
2 Opt
Fact or Fiction
4 Impulse
Time Spiral
Windfall
Timetwister
Ancestral Recall
Wheel of Fortune
Treasure Trove
Crop Rotation
Vampiric Tutor
Demonic Tutor

Other Stuff (12)
2 Gaea's Blessing
2 Orim's Chant
Balance
Regrowth
4 Arcane Denial
Mind Over Matter
Time Walk

Sideboard (15)
4 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Swords to Plowshares
2 Disenchant
3 Chill
3 Moat


(The winning combo is Tolarian Academy + MoM + Treasure Trove + Braingeyser/Stroke)

Now I guess I'll just go through the list and explain it all.

Scroll Rack: I don't think an explination is needed. Renewing my hand gets the combo out anyhere between one and ten turns faster, and that's all that matters.
Mana Artifacts: These power the Academy besides accelerating the deck by themselves. Grim Monolith and Mana Crypt I've considered taking out a few times, but they usually help a lot more than they hinder. I take out the crypt if I'm playing slow control - it does too much damage in these cases, and I take out the monolith when I play a very fast deck such as dragon.
Land: I'm set with everything except the Cities of Brass. I've been thinking of switching them for the two duals I don't have 4 of, but when I do that I always seem to get bad draws. If speed isn't too important against the deck I'm playing, I usually end up siding either one or both cities out for something more useful.
Card Drawing Instants: The basis of this deck is to tear through the library as quickly as possible. Frantic Search is essentially free and works well with Academy. FoF is good too, although sometimes I find it a bit costly. Impulses work wonders, tucking junk far, far away. They also are good with scroll rack. I've thought about the Opts quite a bit, as they aren't much more than a cantrip. The reason I keep them over superior cards such as brainstorm is the extra card that gets cycled to the bottom of the deck. With brainstorm, although an extra card is drawn, if no card is needed from those that are drawn, than it doesn't accelerate the deck as much as opt. I've thought about Slight of Hand, too, but I've been sticking with this version for a while just to see how it plays out. Ancestral Recall needs no elaboration.
Searching: Tutors and Rotation get the combo faster.
Hand Renewal: (See above)
Treasure Trove: I usually keep this in my hand until the combo is ready, but I've played it a few times in midgame where it's very helpful. It's not completely useless, but there is no replacement for the combo that I've been able to find.
Balance: Used with MoM as a Mind Twist, always used as a Wrath of God, a few times used as an Armageddon (if I draw lots of moxes and not so much land).
Orim's Chant: I've been a lot happier with this than with abeyance. Aside from preventing counters on the combo turn, it stops creatures for that extra turn needed. I've found myself using this a lot on turns two and three against aggro, buying myself the time needed to build the combo.
Gaea's Blessing: This is the card that I am never sure about. It's here "just in case" - if my academy burns to an early Wasteland, if the other guy brings out a Disk, etc. I can't ever name a single time when it has won me a game, but I usually find myself relieved to have it. When there's nothing to resurrect, I play it without touching my graveyard in order to shuffle the library for a fresh draw with Scroll Rack and a cantrip.
4 Arcane Denial - Of all the counters out there, I am happiest with these. The colorless cost helps a lot when I get a dual and a non-blue mox, but mainly it's the extra card that helps. I don't care much what the other guy draws, as long as it's not something that woudl tear me apart. Usually it isn't, since there are only a few cards that I really need to worry about, and they are generally not present in great quantity in any deck I have played.
Regrowth, Time Walk, Mind Over Matter - All of these are staples in here.

The Sideboard is engineered toward Sligh, although the Swords to Plowshares are good against targetable Morphlings. Sligh has given me the most problems of the decks I've played, but the sideboard usually shuts that deck down pretty well. I'm not sure what to do against Dragon, if anything. My combo comes out faster sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't. I'm not sure how this does against something with heavy in counterspells. I haven't run across any monoblue decks for some reason... either my good luck for not being beaten a whole lot, or my bad luck for not getting any experience against counters.

I was thinking about mainboarding 2 disenchants and taking out the Gaea's Blessings altogether, but I still want to playtest this a bit more before I switch them. Same about switching Opts for Sleight of Hand.

So, that about sums it up. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated., especially if I've missed some card that's very obviously superiour to what I've thrown together.

Oh, lastly, this deck needs some sort of catchy name.

Thanks!

[Matt The Great]

You're missing Black Lotus.

Honestly, this really just looks like a weak Neo-Academy.

//Protection - 7
        4 Force of Will
        2 Abeyance
        1 Capsize
//Draw - 17
        4 Impulse
        4 Meditate
        1 Ancestral Recall
        1 Frantic Search
        1 Timetwister
        1 Time Spiral
        1 Wheel of Fortune
        1 Windfall
        1 Stroke of Genius
        1 Braingeyser
//Search - 5
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Vampiric Tutor
        1 Mystical Tutor
        1 Crop Rotation
        1 Regrowth
//Miscelaneous - 3
        1 Time Walk
        1 Mind Over Matter
        1 Fastbond
//Artifacts - 18
        2 Candelabra of Tawnos
        4 Helm of Awakening
        1 Mana Vault
        1 Grim Monolith
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Sol Ring
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Mox Diamond
        1 Lotus Petal
//Land - 11
        4 City of Brass
        4 Gemstone Mine
        2 Undiscovered Paradise
        1 Tolarian Academy

The decklist I just gave needs no further anti-aggro measures, as it is plenty fast enough to ignore aggro entirely. A typical sideboard would include a transformational sideboard replete with Phyrexian Negators (the plan is that a blue-based control deck will side out all its anti-creature spells and you could take them by surprise with a quick 'Gator). Red Elemental Blast helps this as well.\n\n

[Nova]

I kept going over Matt's list again and again, because it comes to 61 cards.  There are 2 time walks    We also generally add tinker/memory jar and one or two underground seas.  The list we had from extreme vintage was different from Matt's by:

-1 Impulse
-1 Meditate
-1 Helm of Awakening
-1 Time Walk (the duplicate)

+1 Tinker
+1 Jar
+1 Underground Sea

Matt was right on when he said this thing stomps aggro.  It puts up extremely high percentages against the aggro decks.  This allows you to devote the entire sideboard to trying to win against control.  We toyed around with a few different sideboards, but the transformational one ended up being one we stuck with.

[Matt The Great]

As a final note, in general I am against just shoving accepted decklists in people's faces, especially new players. But the first deck already was based off abusing Tolarian Academy in a combo deck, and when you're playing combo you're clearly not doing it for 'fun', you're doing it to win the damn game.

Also, it didn't really bring anything new to the table (mostly just reflected general un-tuneded-ness [double hyphens are almost as cool as brackets]), so that's why Nova and I are kind of just spouting off "this is what you should do."

Oh, and the two Time Walks happened because the list I was copy/pasting wasn't organized at ALL and the extra Walk slipped in while I was sorting the cards.\n\n

[Puschkin]

Thanx for clearing that up, otherwise I was about to say that your comment was rather harsh, especially since Sir Mortax made such a long post with explanations and since he said he tinkers with that deck for about 2 years. He obviously built it by himself, makng most decisins by himself and based on experience, I guess he will still rather use this than start "netdecking" at this point of his deck´s evolution.
So, if you really want to help him, explain your changes to his version thoroughly.

[Matt The Great]

I don't mean to stifle innovation, just letting this fine fellow know that his deck seems to be evolving parallel to another established deck and that he would probably benefit from others' hard work on a similar project.

Okay Puschkin, let it never be said that I didn't want to help.

The Lotus should need no explanation. The Petal functions much the same way, making the deck built for sheer speed. I will be referring to the increased speed of the deck I posted many times, as that selfsame speed is the primary attraction of such a deck. Many potential problems (like the issues with Sligh you mentioned) can be overcome just by upping the goldfish speed by a turn. A faster deck wouldn't need all of that Sligh hate in the sideboard, and could at least pretend to stand up to a control deck with a transformational sideboard.

Eleven artifacts are really not enough. The next best artifacts to add in are Helms of Awakening. They speed the deck up, as well as powering the Academy and not helping your opponent too much - the only spells you really care about are 1) Force of Will, 2) Mana Drain, 3) Duress, 4) Hymn to Tourach. None of that is helped by Helms, so you're pretty good there.

As Sir Motrax noted, Opt is weak and better replaced with Meditate for sheer digging power. The Fact or Fiction falls under this realm as well - why take two or three of your next five cards when you could just have them ALL? The Helms and Meditates really sort of justify each other - you wouldn't use one OR the other, but together they just work.

The Candelabras are just plain good with Academy down, but also less obviously enable your deck to go infinite with a Capsize and enough artifacts. This is another reason why an increased artifact count is good.

For protection, Force of Will is used over other pedestrian choices like Arcane Denial or Mana Leak (effectively a hard counter, as the deck I presented aims to win by turn four at the latest) because it allows you to counter without spending mana. This is crucial, because your deck aims to never have a game last past turn four, and in these early turns, it is mana that is scarce and cards that are (semi-)plentiful. Also, FoW can buy that crucial turn against a Suicide Black deck powering out early Negators or Hypnotic Specters, something no other counter (barring horrible things like Foil) can do.

Abeyance is generally used over Chant because with the increased deck speed only counterspells and discard have any real effect - shutting down the attack step is never a concern, and you should have the colorless mana to spare to pay the 1W (as opposed to W). Lastly and possibly most importantly, Abeyance draws you a card. That's pretty strong considering the individual power level of most of the cards in the deck.

Capsize is usually the catch-all for any little problems you have, such as an Obstinate Familiar/Ivory Mask...or an opponent dropping Academy before you do.

A few more notes about "speed" - the fast wins of the deck make Gemstone Mine a perfect mana source, and this also applies to CoB - the life loss hardly ever will catch up with you.

The Blessings are simply not needed - Regrowth/Timetwister is enough recursion. Those should probably be cut regardless of how much of these comments Sir Motrax takes to heart.

The Treasure Trove really starts to pale in effectiveness compared to the Meditate engine. The biggest problem with Trove is that it is incredibly hungry for precious blue mana, and isn't good enough until you get Academy up and running. Neither is Mind over Matter, but then MoM does a lot more for you than Trove ever will.

The deck I listed doesn't run Balance because as I said, it needs no real help beating aggressive decks, which Balance is best at. Balance still could be useful as a Mind Twist, and it's not a horrible choice by any means. I do not think I am qualified to say why it is suboptimal, except to say that it is not an especially fast card.

Lastly, the Strip Mine is a little out of place. The deck really does not need to be very disruptive to win, and Strip Mine costs you a land drop (annoying) as well as not being good at mana production at ALL (you should have all the colorless you need). Also, Capsize is a more versatile (and Force-pitchable, and Mystical Tutor-able) answer to an opposing Academy.

Phew. I think that's everything.\n\n

[Puschkin]

Too bad that Mortax never replied! Dudes, if someone dedicates so much time to you like Matt did, you should at least report back!

[Anonymous]

Matt, that was splendid, but where were you when I was trying to come up with a competitive tradewind survival deck (don't tell me it can't be done, for my faith is unshakeable).