Tainted Dreams

[Anonymous]

I read Rasko's aticle recently... here's the site:

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=4494

He talked about OftenLost and Tainted Dreams...

Tainted Dreams, Max Ceniceros, January 2003 test deck
Combo (10)
4 Underworld Dreams
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Timetwister
1 Time Spiral
1 Windfall
1 Memory Jar
1 Winds of Change

Draw and manipulation (10)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
3 Tainted Pact
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Frantic Search
1 Tinker
1 Regrowth

Others (8)
1 Time Walk
4 Duress
2 City of Solitude
1 Zuran Orb

Mana (32)
1 Fastbond
4 Dark Ritual
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 "Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Helm of Awakening
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Gemstone Mine
2 City of Brass
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Badlands
1 Tropical Island
1 Volcanic Island

As a general concept it looks very good.  Broken cards are good, but they are truly broken when used in combo.  Basing decks around cards like Timetwister and Wheel of Fortune is productive.

I tested it against WW, and the results are as follows...

1 turn one win
2 turn two wins
4 turn three wins
1 turn four win
no losses

  

If it is tweaked well enough, we could turn this into a near-acadamey-level combo deck!  

2 City of Solitudes look like a little much, and there is a lot of pain in the manabase--two things that should be fixed

[Anonymous]

As far as dreams decks go, that looks like a very solid build.  The only problem I have is the deck you tested against.  WW is an aggro deck with absolutely no disruption outside of a strip or null rod.  That should in general be a combo deck's best match.  In order to truly judge the power of a combo deck, you need to test its resilience against control, and the various aggro/control decks out there.  A combo isn't judged by how thoroughly it crushes sligh, but by how resilient it is against control.  That's my 2 cents.  

Anyways, keep up the good work.  I'd love to see another (not too degenerate) combo deck take off.  Diversity of the decks is the single greatest thing T1 has going for it.  I wish you the best of luck in your testing.

[suicide_slushy]

WW is not a popular archtype these days, and seeing as it has next to no real ways to fight combo, you may as well have tested against a goldfish.  I am not saying that dreams is a bad deck, in fact i'm amused by the combo, but you should really be testing against decks like:

keeper
grow (and variants)
mask
sligh
TnT
other combo decks
other decks popular in your metagame

[MoreFling]

I really agree with suicide_slushy.

Testing against Ww prooves nothing.

[Anonymous]

WW can't be that bad against a combo that requires a 3cc enchantment to be in play to win. They're not exactly short for ways of removing the dreams.

[Anonymous]

I had a few games against Acadamey, and Dreams simply beats it into the dirt.  The entire acadamey engine is centered around drawing cads, so if you can resolve a Dreams, it's game over!

I haven't done any testing yet, but as Necrologia said, it should kill most aggro decks with a passion (TnT, Mask, Sligh).

And just as a side note, in two of the WW test games, WW Seal of Cleansinged a Dreams, so testing against it can't be ALL bad...

[j_orlove]

Well, testing against WW is basically goldfishing.  

Just try playing it against stuff with Force of Will. Then you'll see why it wants both those cities of solitude.  

[Anonymous]

I know that this is a tad off topic, but I would love to test anybody over apprentice, but I can't get the Onslaught update for the Polluted Deltas, and I am new to apprentice, so I don't know exactly how to connect.  That would solve the keeper testing problem--nobody I know around here even has a Keeper deck except for the P9 tournaments, so testing over apprentice would be a big help.

For suicide_slushy, the only other popular decks in my metagame are UrPhidian, which could present a problem in tournaments.  

Also, I was just thinking that an Abyss might be a good addition to this deck--with all of the pain that I take from the manabase, wiping out a whole bunch of creatures could help a lot.  Probably that should be reserved for the sideboard vs. creature-based decks.

[MoreFling]

You can download patches at www.e-league.com, and play in their channel #apprentice on EFnet.

However, I recommend playing in #magic-league on irc.Quicknet.nl, the people there are generally nicer. Keep in mind though, that testing over the internet doesn't proove much.
The Magic-league thing can be found at www.magic-league.com

[Anonymous]

If your going to test against WW with combo at least run the version with Mox Pearl, Mox Diamond,  Black Lotus, Lotus Petal, 4 Armageddons, 2-4 Seals of Cleansing, and a couple Wastelands. It has a much better chance against combo decks if they hit on turn 3-4. Can't do much about turn 1-2 though

Deck looks interesting. Only 4 Duresses and 2 City's of Solitude seems awful low against control decks or even other heavy disruption combo decks though. I'd really try and get some more disruption in (Unmask or Hymm maybe).

With no basic land, no main deck enchantment removal, and no Cunning Wish Back to Basics or Bloodmoon are really going to hurt. It's a very focused combo deck but I just don't see the disruption to make it past a decent control deck.

[Anonymous]

With more testing, I have come to realize just how powerful this can be.  A resolved Dreams spells doom for any control deck that can't win quickly, and counters all of the hand-resetters.  This deck crushed aggro in the first place.  Combo is tougher, but with the new B/R list, DragonCombo and ReapLace falls, and we'll be seeing a lot less combo.

Basically, it goes like this:

If you're aggro, you lose.  This is almost a given.

If you're combo, it depends on the deck, but it's split pretty evenly.

If you're control without counterspells, you lose.

If you're control with counterspells, you have to do everything you can to not let them resolve a single spell in the first few turns, or you lose.

I don't know about you, but I think that this deck could potentially become the next respected combo archetype, stepping in for DragonCombo.

P.S. Has anyone else done any testing with this deck?  I seem to be the only person out there with results, even if the initial ones WERE against WW.   

[Anonymous]

I fail to see why with the new restrictions ReapLace becomes less viable.  And as far as Tainted Dreams replacing Dragon as "respectable" combo, that will be difficult as Dragon never really was respected.  Too many cards stopped the deck cold, if any combo is respected I would imagine it to be Academy.  I'm not so sure that Tainted Dreams is better than Academy, and once April rolls around combo in general is looking like a bad metagame call if berserking togs are running around packing FoWs.

[Often Lost]

Yay, a thread about my deck.

Well, I havnt played Magic for quite a while, but dreams is a competent deck. It beats TnT (it does, i swear   ), and, well, it beats all aggro. Against other combo the deck should mulligen into a Dreams or just play aggressivly. The thing about this deck against combo is, once you reslove a dreams (its not too hard), half the game is won. A resolved dreams is extremly dangerous, and this is why this is one of the better combo decks out there. Hell, this deck has even won under a Blood Moon and B2B. I remember comboing out Zherbus' Holy Tommy Gun while he had blood moon out.

Oh, and the few games I have played with tog, its a pretty good matchup actually. Your draw and kill isnt targetable, making them have few counters. And duress and city can take care of those real easy. I only played a bit, and thos games I played horrible in, but I still pulled out 50/50.

Try the deck.

[Anonymous]

I agree with all of the others--testing against WW doesn't prove anything, however lets discuss the actual deck.  This deck is much more competitive than a whole bunch of people might think.  It beats GAT 50/50 BEFORE sideboarding, crushes all aggro, and all non-countering control.  Counter-based Control and fellow combo decks are its only problem.  There is a lot of sideboard hate out for the countering decks (as they are just about this deck's only problem), but the combo decks are rare these days after the new B+R list, and every deck must have a bad matchup (I don't want to start an argument about Keeper's beatability here--lets just assume that SOMETHING out there beats it consistently).  It seems like the most viable card for addititon lately was Trade Secrets--what would you cut?  This is a very tight and    decklist.

[ShadowLotus]

Whoa, I haven't seen this thread in ages!  You just brought it back from the dead, I suppose. ;p  This was previously closed, but the Mod staff has decided to allow the revival of old threads to encourage refreshing discussion in any topics that user's wish.  Sorry about the confusion, folks! )\n\n