[Deck] Panoptic Mirror FTW

[netherspirit]

After my recent testing with Control Slaver, which I am finally getting a grip on, I've come up with a deck that uses similar moves to CS. But in my opinion this can be quite a lot faster than CS, it does take at least 23 turns to win usually though.

I'm currently testing against an artifact aggro deck, and I can usually get full control by turn 3. I have quite a lot of disruption to stop them and protect my own cards, so far though Tormod's Crypt has owned me.

Here's my current list:

Mana Base:
5 Moxen (the good ones obviously)
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
4 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Island
2 Darksteel Citadel

Creatures:
4 Goblin Welder

Disruption:
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

Draw/Tutors:
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Careful Study
4 Thirt for Knowledge
1 Personal Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tinker
3 Brainstorm (I hate this card!!)
1 Frantic Search

The Combo:
4 Panoptic Mirror
1 Time Walk

Others:
1 Rack and Ruin
1 Echoing Truth
1 Reito Lantern

Well, that's it, now for card explanations.

Goblin Welder: Brings Panoptic Mirror into play, also serves as kill condition.
Mana Drain: Disruption AND acceleration.
Force of Will: Purely amazing.
Vampiric/Demonic Tutor: Best tutors available for black, they give me a reason to splash it on their own.
Careful Study: Fills the graveyard with Panoptic Mirrors from my hand, and lets me filter out any junk I don't want and replace it with better stuff.
Thirst for Knowledge: Speaks for itself.
Personal/Mystical Tutor: Fetch Time Walk.
Ancestral Recall: Auto-include.
Tinker: BROKEN!!!
Only 3 Brainstorm: I found 4 to be a bit overwhelming, the deck relies on card advantage, but Brainstorm only improves card quality. It doesn't actually net any card advantage.
Frantic Search: Lets me ditch Panoptic Mirrors from hand, and filters out any other junk I may have, plus it's basically free to play.
Panoptic Mirror: Imprint Time Walk and you've won.
Time Walk: Imprint on Panoptic Mirror and you've won.
Rack and Ruin: Kills Moxen, Stax pieces etc.
Echoing Truth: Bounces any threats/blockers.
Reito Lantern: Recycles my library, Echoing Truth basically bounces everything once this hits, and Rack and Ruin kills ALL their artifacts.

The deck plays similarly to Control Slaver, spending the early game countering and slowly netting card advantage. The mid game is all about getting as much card advantage as possible and getting the combo in. The late game is hilarious though, take about 20 turns beating down with Welder as your opponent never takes another turn.

Well, that's all I have to say for now, but if I've missed something please tell me. Any comments would be much appreciated!

 Netherspirit

[Harlequin]

The way you have the deck right now, you're EXTREMLY Narrow.  There are a plethera of cards that shut down your ability to win the game.   Also there is no reason to run 4 panoptic mirrors.... 2 at the most.  CS runs at most 2 Mindslavers and the thing sacrifices itself. 

Off the bat:
-2 Panoptic Mirrors
-2 Careful Study
+1 Brainstorm
+1 Yawgmoths will
+1 Burning Wish
+1 Darksteel Collosus

That gives you at least 1, if not 2 alternate win conditions.  Imprinting a card like Burning wish could prove to be rather insane.  Also running Will + Burning wish lets you naturally run tendrils in the board for a solid lategame yawg-win.  It also means you can run Timewarp in your board for an alternate late-game  Panoptic win.

You probably need a better "tool belt" in the main deck.  Triskellion is a good start.  (-1 Lantern, +1 Triskellion)

[Toad]

I find it amusing that you ditch Brainstorm for not providing card advantage and yet run 2 Careful Study and Frantic Search.

[netherspirit]

Hehe, I thought someone would say that, the thing with them though is that they allow me to discard mirrors.

@Harlequin: Yawg's Will hasn't done anything at all useful, and the Tendrils win just doesn't work. Triskelions good though.

So far I've played against artifact beats, black reanimator, Oath, and UW Fish, the only deck that beat me was the Fish one, not too bad so far I guess.

[Harlequin]

@Harlequin: Yawg's Will hasn't done anything at all useful, and the Tendrils win just doesn't work.

But together they are AMAZING!

In all seriousness, running burning wish + Tendrils in the board gives you an alternate with useing Yawgmoths will.  And that card wins games.  Esp if your truely tring to mimic what slaver does in the early and mid games.

[netherspirit]

The deck never has enough mana to go broken, I get 8 life from it at most usually, just not that great. I'd prefer to have those slots taken up by ways to find or protect my combo.

[zeus-online]

Hmm Yawg will dosnt do "Enough" ? ...i wanna try whatever you're smoking

Will is like...the only reason for running black in control slaver.

In all honesty i think you'd be much better off just tweaking a CS deck rather then running a large amount of crappy artifacts that you cant hardcast before its too late.

/Zeus

[netherspirit]

The thing with will is that I've only actually needed it once, the rest of the time I've just got Mirror with Walk and beat them down. And the one time that I did need Will it only got me the 8 life with Tendrils.

EDIT:

Here's the updated list, every time I make a change I'll edit this list and note the change.

Mana Base:
5 Moxen (the good ones obviously)
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
4 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Island
2 Darksteel Citadel

Creatures:
3 Goblin Welder
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Triskelion

Disruption:
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

Draw/Tutors:
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Thirt for Knowledge
1 Personal Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tinker
3 Brainstorm
1 Frantic Search
1 Burning Wish
1 Memory Jar

The Combo:
3 Panoptic Mirror
1 Time Walk

Others:
1 Rack and Ruin
1 Echoing Truth
1 Yawgmoth's Will

SB:
1 Recall
1 Time Warp
1 Tendrils
1 Echoing Ruin
2 Pyroclasm
2 Eye of Nowhere
2 Fire/Ice
2 Shattering Spree
3 Pithing Needle

I kept Yawgmoth's Will because although it didn't win me the game with Tendrils it did  allow me to replay a Mox, Lotus, and 2 or 3 draw spells.

Change 1: -1 Goblin Welder, -1 Cunning Wish, +1 Memory Jar, +1 Burning Wish
New Sideboard: See list.

Change 2: -1 Darksteel Citadel, -1 Polluted Delta, +2 Flooded Strand

[zeus-online]

Will'ing back a tutor/ancestral/time walk + some random stuff like brainstorm/fetch is usually enough to swing the game so heavily in your favor that you just can't loose.

/Zeus

[netherspirit]

Will'ing back a tutor/ancestral/time walk + some random stuff like brainstorm/fetch is usually enough to swing the game so heavily in your favor that you just can't loose.

/Zeus

I'll never will back Time Walk, if it's in my graveyard I've made a mistake somewhere.

[never]

How is this better than meandeck gifts?

The entire purpose of meandeck gifts is to tinker for darksteel and then cast timewalk twice. The deck can do this by 3rd or 4th turn.

It seems like it would take this deck a lot longer to set up its win than that and it doesn't have the "oops, I won" factor that a slaver activation has against some decks.

[Harlequin]

Will'ing back a tutor/ancestral/time walk + some random stuff like brainstorm/fetch is usually enough to swing the game so heavily in your favor that you just can't loose.

/Zeus

I'll never will back Time Walk, if it's in my graveyard I've made a mistake somewhere.

This is why I suggested Burning wish in the first place.

[netherspirit]

How is this better than meandeck gifts?

The entire purpose of meandeck gifts is to tinker for darksteel and then cast timewalk twice. The deck can do this by 3rd or 4th turn.

It seems like it would take this deck a lot longer to set up its win than that and it doesn't have the "oops, I won" factor that a slaver activation has against some decks.

I don't play meandeck gifts and nevr have done, so I wouldn't know.

Will'ing back a tutor/ancestral/time walk + some random stuff like brainstorm/fetch is usually enough to swing the game so heavily in your favor that you just can't loose.

/Zeus

I'll never will back Time Walk, if it's in my graveyard I've made a mistake somewhere.

This is why I suggested Burning wish in the first place.

Yeah I know, but I think it causes problems because you then have to wait to get Burning Wish before you can use Time Walk again, and beings Burning Wish is restricted it can prove quite difficult to find.

[Harlequin]

Adding Burning wish along side your timewalk gives you +1 win condition and +1 ways to find Timewalk, AND the ability to play timewalk into your graveyard.  You could even run a Regroth or Recall (non-ancestral normal "Recall") to give you more liberal use of your timewalk, ie ways to return it to your hand.  What if they have an active welder?  Even if you use the Stack-tricks to play a single copy of Timewalk off the mirror, If they weld it out after you imprint, then you loose your combo forever.

[netherspirit]

Fire/Ice is for the Welder problem. I had been considering Regrowth, but Recall looks like a good call too, I might try it.

[frolll]

Just saying that, but -1 Welder, -1 Mirror, +1 Memory Jar, +1 Brainstorm, -1 Cunning Wish, +1 Burning Wish seems to be a rather right move in my opinion. But, anyway, the Mirror is sub-par when compared to Slaver and this deck is Slaver...

Howerver I do appreciate people with ideas. so I'll wish you good luck dude in your tweakings.

Also, the Tendrils alternate win is golden, and maybe a lone Time Warp in the sideboard won't be that worse, along with a Rolling Earthquake. But, hey, you really don't want 3 Mirrors and 3 Welders are more than enough to do the trick. The Jar will give you the possibility to Will for something absolutely nuts and therefore Burning Wish is not bad either.

my 2 cents...


Edit: Recall does seem to me as really sub-par. This is actually worse than Recoup... Hey! Argivian Find could do the job!

[Harlequin]

Recall was a burning wish board suggestion.  Not for the main deck.  Recoup wouldn't help you get timewalk back in hand.. but it would let you get timewalk RFGed if you have Burning wish on the mirror.  Remember you can have multiple cards on one mirror.  but you have to pick one to play.

Burning wish board:
Recall
Timewarp
Tendrils of Agongy
Echoing Ruin
Pyroclasm (is probable better than rolling EQ becuase it can be imprinted on mirror)
Eye of Nowhere (could also be nasty on Mirror)

so Then you imprint Burning Wish on the mirror, and start grabbing your other cards to put on the mirror.  Like Echoing Ruin, Clasm, or Eye of nowhere.  This buys you some time to find your Timewalk.  Heck you could even put yuor Personal tutor in the board so you could burning wish for personal tutor, then use the tutor to find and imprint timewalk.

[netherspirit]

Right, I'll try Burning Wish again, but I'm keeping the Mirror count at 3.

[Purple Hat]

not playing 4x shaharzad in this deck is a crime against nature.

[netherspirit]

Changes made, see reply with current list on, lol.

[frolll]

I could see these changes, maybe: Cut the Frantic Search and add the 4th Brainstorm. Cut a Darksteel Citadel and run a 5th fetch, like 3 Polluted Delta, 2 Flooded Strand. Cut a Mirror and add Lotus Petal/Mana Crypt/Mana Vault. You may even cut the other Citadel and run another artifact accelerant...

Then, you'll gain a better draw engine (and, much important, a better curve). Also, going for 5 fetches can make you less vulnerable to color death, and cutting a 3rd Mirror for acceleration is nothing bad.

BTW, I do like the idea of splashing white, for, say, Swords to Plowshares removing pesky blockers. And, just a note, how did you beat for 20 or so turns with Welder if there is Nimble Mongoose facing you?

(actually, the Personnal Tutor slot seems like win-more, or just gadget. Perhaps a maindecked Tormod's Crypt would't be bad. And white could give you Morningtide as a wish target, or Balance.)

[netherspirit]

Never faced a mongoose, although before I cut the Reito Lantern I could have attacked with two Welders, 1 would die, put it on the bottom, wait til I pull it again, and repeat. When I tried using only 2 Mirrors it just didn't work, I couldn't seem to pull one. I will try cutting a citadel though.

EDIT: Deck changed, list updated.