My friend is utterly obsessed with Underworld Dreams. He&...

[Solaran_X]

My friend is utterly obsessed with Underworld Dreams. He's been trying to build a deck around it, and has it narrowed down to three colors. Unfortunately, it is highly inconsistent - sometimes it will play like gold and kill on turn four or five. And sometimes it will stall worse than a rundown car taken from a redneck's front yard.

Our metagame is very weak. Only myself and another person are powered, and play true Type I decks. Another two players have some decent decks - a hybrid Enchantress/Oath deck and then either an Oath deck with Nishboas and Iridescent Angels or RecSur, depending on what that person brought that week. Besides myself, there are no Misdirections in the area. Only a handful of Wastelands and Strip Mines, and less than ten Blood Moons and Back to Basics between me and the other powered players ( they're almost a dead card in my metagame ).

Majority of the decks in my area are just the usual random scrub aggro - Elves and Goblins, occassionally a slapped together Type II Madness deck with a Lotus Petal tossed in, and a somewhat annoying Laquatus' Champion/Patriarch's Bidding deck.

Here is my first run of an unpowered Underworld Dreams deck. I made it black and white...mostly black and splashing white. Give me ideas on how to improve it, and make it a faster kill.

Lands
4 Swamps
4 Snow-Covered Swamps
4 Polluted Deltas
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Scrublands

Kill
3 Underworld Dreams
3 Howling Mines
3 Teferi's Puzzle Boxes

Tutoring
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
4 Tainted Pacts
4 Academy Rectors

Utility
4 Vindicate

Discard
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress

Creature Kill
4 Chainer's Edict

Exactly 60 cards. I know it's not exactly the accepted standard for a Type I Underworld Dreams deck ( unpowered, and it doesn't have the Academy engine behind it to turn Draw 7s into seven damage ), but my friend has a very limited cardpool.

I chose Rectors as additional Tutors because of their success in Rector Trix. Especially with Cabal Therapies ( obviously ) to essentially turn each Rector into an Underworld Dreams. My other tutors are the accepted black tutors - Demonic Tutor and Consultation, Vampiric Tutor, and a four pack of Tainted Pacts.

I'm also having the deck rely on the discard as proactive creature kill ( Hymns and Therapies ), land kill ( Hymns also ), and regular spell nabbing ( all three ). Chainer's Edicts are useful ( as we all know ) for nailing those annoyingly resilient untargetable creatures and ProBlack creatures.

Vindicate is my general purpose removal card. With the almost complete lack of Misdirections in my metagame, it is a very safe card to use. And it fills a gap in black - artifact and enchantment removal. And maindecked, it could serve better than Disenchant since I could also nail annoying creatures and the occassional specialty land.

In my limited playtesting with this deck, a third turn Underworld Dreams is very easy to pull off, although I need to make room for Dark Rituals.

Besides the obvious need for Dark Rituals, what else does the deck need? And does anyone else have any ideas on what to cut to make room for the four Dark Rituals?

And what about Spoils of the Vault from Mirrodin? Could that be a viable tutor-effect for this deck or not?\n\n

[dandan]

I'd add:

4 Dark Rituals
Necro
Stripmine
Underworld Dreams
4 Wastelands
2 Anvil of Bogarden (a touch safer than Howling Mine, errata means it no longer hoses Necro)
4 Powder Kegs (rule in unpowered)
Yawgmoth's Will (not broken in this deck but still your favourite top deck if you don't win early)

-4 Caves
-4 Rector
-4 Vindicate
-3 Howling Mines
-4 Therapy

Innocent Blood may well be better than Edict as it is cheaper (and has good utlity if you stay wil Rectors).

You still need another maindeck card, Sinkhole is pretty good if you can get one (6 maindeck LD should get those annoying lands), Funeral Charm is hardly an all-star but will rarely be dead or if you want to be funky, little will get more 'WTF?!' responses than Pox.

I'm not sure Dreams is that solid without the Draw 7s though.

[Methuselahn]

I feel like I must say something comforting after you've described your metagame.  If I had that meta, I'd want to move back to the city for sure.    

I'm not sure how well Howling Mine + Puzzle box works with discard.  Seems sort of self defeating.  I'd suggest Nether Voids, but maybe heavy LD with Spheres instead.  Spheres would help fight your deck I imagine.  Maybe a shift more towards T2 MBC would be worth testing.

Spoils of the Vault looks like a sweet card for this deck.  I know I will be using it in my janky combo decks in groups of 4.

[Solaran_X]

Howling Mine + Puzzle Box is ( or was...depends on test - but I'll try the suggestions, of course ) in there as the main source of damage. Since you apply Howling Mine first now, that maximizes the damage. With Dreams in play, it turns the drawstep into atleast four damage - even if they have an empty hand. Draw two cards for Howling Mine, and then they place those two cards on the bottom of their library and draw two more. I suppose the same would apply with Anvil, except they would lose one card immeadiately, giving the same damage while limited the draw itself.

If I wanted to build this deck as more of a MBC style, I would need to add these Mutilate and some more Swamps, and ditch the white producing lands.

Another benefit of the Rectors is that they can act as blockers until I can establish my combo. And hopefully die to get Dreams into play faster. With white splashed, I know Balance will be boarded. Prehaps a few Mutilates as well, since I run twelve lands that count was Swamps. That could even, theoretically, handle my FEB deck - if he survived that long.

Here is a revised version for now.
Lands
4 Swamps
4 Snow-Covered Swamps
4 Polluted Deltas
4 Caves of Koilos
4 Scrublands

Kill
3 Underworld Dreams
3 Anvil of Bogarden
3 Teferi's Puzzle Boxes

Tutoring
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
4 Tainted Pacts
4 Academy Rectors

Utility
2 Vindicate
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Necropotence

Discard
3 Hymn to Tourach
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress

Creature Kill
3 Innocent Blood

Acceleration
4 Dark Ritual

Sideboard
1 Balance
3 Mutilate
11

And for the record...Type II decks can win in my metagame. I won last week with an unmodified Tog deck that had been Type II legal until 7th rotated out ( Counterspells, Force Spike, and Underground Rivers ). Ironically, the other powered player was running a powered-up version of Astral Slide and we met in the finals.

[Grand Inquisitor]

i don't know if you have the duals to support it, but when i played a casual dreams deck online, prosperity (splashing blue), and winds of change (splashing red) were great at accelerating the kill.  also, diminishing returns could prove useful since you're looking for low-powered draw cards.  play dark ritual!  its the key to getting the clock started early.  i agree with previous posts that discard is useless, except to force the dreams onto the table.  maybe duress/therapy to hand pick spells, but not hymns.

This link may be helpful, not really for card choices, but just to understand how other people have tried to abuse the card.

[Matt The Great]

You could try using red instead of white. 4 Burning Wish maindeck, Yawgmoth's Will and Wheel of Fortune in the side, and three or four Winds of Change in the maindeck. Wish->Wheel->Winds->Winds is a lot faster, and having easy access to Yawgmoth's Will is VERY strong. If you've got the right duals, you could even keep a pinch of white around, to Wish for Balance.

[DeathByDreams]

Quote (Matt The Great @ Sep. 19 2003,11:24)You could try using red instead of white. 4 Burning Wish maindeck, Yawgmoth's Will and Wheel of Fortune in the side, and three or four Winds of Change in the maindeck. Wish->Wheel->Winds->Winds is a lot faster, and having easy access to Yawgmoth's Will is VERY strong. If you've got the right duals, you could even keep a pinch of white around, to Wish for Balance.

I'll second that.

I'm looking for my old list(s) for poweless Underworld Dreams but I think I deleted them all since I aquired power.

[HengeWolf]

My tech is about 8 years old, but draw 7's used to own people with a dreams in play. That's what got it banned from our casual games . . . Timetwister into Wheel-Fork, that's game.

I'd seriously think about adding the Red; I was about to mention blue but obviously that's right out if you haven't got power.

[Solaran_X]

I have the power. My friend doesn't, although he's planning on working on getting a set to join the elite few of us who have power there - me, Gerry, and Ron ( who has Ancestral Recall only... ).

Thanks for all the suggestions, and I'm working on playtesting new versions as I get the suggestions.

[Terevaune]

Wouldn't memory jar be ok in this deck?  Also, if you add blue, what about Urza's guilt or prosperity.

[Matt The Great]

Urza's Guilt is more a combo with Megrim, and Prosperity may as well be a Fireball.

[DeathByDreams]

Quote (Terevaune @ Sep. 21 2003,12:05)Wouldn't memory jar be ok in this deck?

Yeah Memory Jar is perfect for it.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Quote Prosperity may as well be a Fireball

Except that you're a combo deck, and prosperity provides momentum.  Its not great, but its certainly not fireball.

[Rico Suave]

But there are so many better options available to combo than Prosperity.  

Even more search would be preferable over a bad card-drawer.