I Challenge You to a Battle of Wits! A primer piece

[Kowal]

In a format with such a deep and diverse card pool as Type One, oftentimes startlingly good archetypes aren't thought of or are ignored because there's simply not enough time to test them all. One such deck that's been around for quite a while is Battle of Wits. The concept of this archetype is simple: You sacrifice consistency for a very powerful win condition by running a maindeck of more than three times the size of your opponents'. While the size of your deck is clearly intimidating, that alone is not enough to break the format. That's why Matt and I are here to help.

Toaddy and I worked really hard on this.  So did Knut:  it's quite lengthy.  This is continued in part two, which is not yet up as far as I know.  Enjoy!

EDIT:  Part Two is up!

[Machinus]

I don't know if they are online anywhere, but the logs of Finkel playing 1.5 BoW in the Invitational were really entertaining. This deck must be really fun to play.

[Toad]

This is by far the best primer I have ever read.



Big props to Knut for editing all that stuff, and special thanks to Marc, Jacob and Steven for the test games.

[Thug]

I haven't had time to read it all yet, but here are some comments:

I also worked on a BoW wits deck some day, and also went with 5 colours, since want to be able to fill the deck with actual good cards  

My deck actually wasn't all that different from Toads five-colour build. I had a little less countermagic to make place for some other stuff (more win conditions for one). Your mana-base looks a lot more solid though, I didn't put too much time into strange non-basic lands, but you come forth with some very appealling options.

The time I put into it probably means nothing compared to the time you two put into it, but I wonder if some of the combinations were tried:

Quiet Spec + Deep Analysis + Moments Peace. - Being able to search for three Moments Peace drasticly improved my matchups against FCG and other aggro decks. Together with Cunning Wishes you are able to fog more than 5 times consistently. This easily should allow you the to get the carda nd time to play the Battle.

And Quit Spec + DA can break open a control battle.

My Other Win Conditions consisted of Quirion Dryad (extremely strong with all the cantrips), and Mystic Enforcer (people still don't like 6/6 flyers) and Exalted Angels (my manabase consisted of mroe white)

My deck also had some more conditional cards which are very strong in some matchups and less in other (FtK, Moment's Peace, Rack and Ruin, Misdirection, Control Magic), and therefore I also ran cards like (Compulsion, Lat-Nam's Legacy, Thirst, Forbid, Firestorm)

Great work, and also looks like a great primer, I will start reading it now  

Koen

[Toad]

I've been testing Quiet Speculation when I was working on Battle of Wits in December and a bunch of flashback cards. I had 4 Quiet Speculations, the standard 4 Deep Analysis, a [card]Recoup[/card], a Chainer's Edict and a few Roar of the Wurm. It was interesting, but had a minor impact on the game.

I tested Quirion Dryad and found that I needed more pitch counters to ride It to the end of the game. Mystic Enforcer was putting too much pressure on the Green. And I throw Angel in the SB due to the .

Compulsion is good but was too slow and clunky without Squees. I'm just using good cards and have nothing to discard

[Thug]

Quit Spec: I can understand that if you move more towards a version with more hard counters you are not looking for a 2cc sorcery that itself has little impact on the game. The card does belong more in a different version.

Dryads: I played with 2 Misdirection only, but still found them very good, they soak up early damage, and they are a clock for a control player. But once again, if youre playing more controllish you probably don't want to tap out for it turn 2.

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On your version, the primer (yeah I did read it now) said you should not play Enlightened Tutor maindeck, and one of the reasons is the card disadvantage. But Sterling Grove is much slower and has the same disadvantage. I understand that Enlightened can be cute as a Wish target, but isn't it wirth playing maindeck because it can also artifacts (lotus) allowing some nice turn two BoW's.

I must admit I had a little more variaty in targets for it, but even in your version it seems playable maindeck.

Also, do you need to much blue mana early on to run Factories? if not, could they be an option?

Koen