Multani's Presence Combo

[jro]

As we all do, I got to thinking about the "free spell" combo decks that are typically centered around 0cc creatures and Glimpse of Nature.  From time to time, folks will bring up Multani's Presence / Chalice of the Void as something to include in that deck.  But a forum search yields no decks that are built around that combo without also including Glimpse of Nature.  It seems to me that Presence / Chalice without Glimpse allows builds that are closer to the pure combo ideal of 59 free cantrips and a free kill spell.  This deck would simply lose to Force of Will, but I think it's interesting in terms of how far you can push the idea.

I put this together as a Legacy deck because it seems better in that format (because of 4x Lotus Petal):

4x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Multani's Presence
1x Bayou
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Despotic Scepter
-11 non 0cc spells

4x Chalice of the Void
4x Lotus Petal
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Claws of Gix
4x Chrome Mox
-20 0cc artifacts

4x Kobold 1
4x Kobold 2
4x Kobold 3
4x Ornithopter
4x Shield Sphere
4x Phyrexian Walker
1x Phrexian Marauder
4x Shifting Wall
-29 0cc creatures

So the idea (of course) is to use Lotus Petal or Elvish Spirit Guides to cast Multani's Presence, and then cast Chalice of the Void for 0.  This will leave you with 4 cards in hand (5 on the draw).  Your goal is to cycle the cards (cast them and let them get countered by Chalice) until you get another Spirit Guide and Presence.  Put that out, and your hand size starts to increase.  You should easily be able to draw your deck in this fashion.  You can then use a Spirit Guide to cast Despotic Scepter and kill your Chalice.  Then drop Bayou, 1 Lotus Petal and (say) some Chrome Moxen (removing Kobolds), and cast Tendrils.  Alternately, you could keep Burning Wish or Death Wish main, and then use Lion's Eye Diamond to power a Tendrils out of the sideboard.

Anyway, if anyone has thoughts on other 0cc stuff to use, I'd be glad to hear it.  Probably the best thing about the deck is that if you stall, you just have to draw another 0cc spell to keep going (unlike Glimpse).

[Matt]

1. This isn't very casual. I mean, you're trying for a turn two win!
2. What do you do when you get a Presence and no Chalice, or vice versa? You have no way to get one besides topdecking and mulligans. I would find a way to fix this.

[LotusHead]

Why not play Glimpse in addition to Multani's presence?

[Jank Golem]

My only experience with this deck is in type 1 however here are the suggestions I would make.

-Run Brain Freeze instead of tendrils
-Run glimpse and presence
-Run as many 0cc creatures as possible, which means 4 marauders
- Mullagain aggressively until you get a good hand

I am currently trying out Serum Powder with this deck, it helps you get more consistent hands but is horrible to draw when trying to go off. I have yet to find a viable version of this deck although I wish you luck, let us know how it turns out.

[The Atog Lord]

Brass Man and I tried to get this sort of deck to work in Type One.

The fundamental problem is that without Chalice, Presence is a dead card. And without Presence, Chalice is a dead card. And, moreover, the deck requires that you assemble the two-card engine before you can actually get any value out of your 0-drops. WIthout some means of gaining an advantage off the 0-drops, you're playing with a lot of intert cards. Now, Glimpse is a one-card means of turning those inert drops into something useful; without Glimpse, you are required to put together two cards to even get your engine online.

In either Legacy or Type One, a two-card combo had better win you the game. Moreover, you should have means of protecting your combo, and ways of assembling the pieces. Oath, for instance, assembles a two-card combo that wins the game in a few turns, while playing plenty of disruption and search.

[jro]

The reason that I tried to build the deck without Glimpse of Nature is that Glimpse requires more "non-cycling" cards than this combo (see discussion below).  As I mentioned in my first post, I was trying to push for as pure a combo deck as possible, so I deliberately avoided running disruption and so on.  It may make for an objectively worse competitive deck, but I'm trying for "highest-percentage, fastest goldfish".  That's part of the reason I posted this in Casual.

The problem with all of these decks is that they require assembling the combo card and the mana to cast it.  Then, when you're comboing out, those mana cards are typically non-cycling draws (they're either lands, Elvish Spirit Guide, or 0cc artifacts).  This means that, in a Glimpse deck, all of your mana sources are effectively non-cycling draws, as are any further Glimpses.  Given that there are only a limited number of 0cc creatures (8, 9 if you count Skyshroud Cutter, and I don't), you have to fill the deck out with other non-cycling cards as well.  The advantage that Presence / Chalice has is that you can play 8 mana sources, 4 Presence, and 4 Chalice, and only have 8 non-cycling, non-win cards in your deck (ESG and Presence).  Since you need something to kill the Chalice and something to kill your opponent, that makes 10 total non-cycling cards, which gives you a very high chance of not fizzling.   And because Presence is a permanent, if you do fizzle, you can just start again with another 0cc spell.  The trade off is that you have to assemble three cards to go off (mana, Presence, Chalice) instead of 2 (mana, Glimpse).   How much that affects the speed and consistency of your kill overall, I don't know.

The way I see it, there are four stages to the deck.  First, assemble and cast the combo.  Next, filter through the deck to get another draw effect and play it. Now draw the remainder of the deck.  Finally, perform the kill.  Ideally, all the cards would be useful at every stage.  But without that, I think that Presence / Chalice (perhaps with Glimpse included) may have more raw killing power than a more Glimpse oriented build (at least until they print  more 0cc creatures-- maybe Wild Cantor could count?).