PARFAIT: my version

[Anonymous]

Ok I only called it ultimate to make you curious.
If you are reading this it worked. This either draws flames or fools people and we don´t need everybody doing that. Please don´t do this again. Topic title changed accordingly. -Puschkin
please continue.

I have been playing against parfait piloted by my friend cullen pretty much since it's inception by K-Run (the brian weissman of parfait).  I have watched the deck evolve from a cute concept deck to a type one deck to be feared.  

The splash of red for bloodmoon has been a natural evolution of the deck giving it a bomb against a wide variety of decks.

The 2 wrath of gods are the two cards in parfait that have always seemed out of place since they are not enchantments.  A second humility main is an option, but if we splash black....

THE ABYSS!!!

Most aggro decks can recover from a WoG, but many decks simply scoop to abyss.  Esspecially in a deck with several ways of recurring it.

So here it is followed by card by card analysis.

PARFAIT w/sprinkles

THE ENGINE (9)

4 Land Tax
3 Scroll Rack
2 Claws of Gix

CROWD CONTROL (7)

4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Humility
1 Abyss
1 Balance

RECCURSION (7)

4 Argivian Find
3 Replenish

SILVER BULLETS (7)

1 Bloodmoon
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Ivory Mask
3 Aura of Silence
1 Story Circle

TOOLS AND TRICKS (5)

1 Enlightened Tutor
4 Orim's Chant

THE KILL (2)

2 Sacred Mesa

MANA (23)

1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Diamond
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl
1 Sol Ring
2 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
13 Plains

SB
1 Replenish
1 Humility
1 Blood Moon
4 Tower
4 Seal
3 Crypt
1 Thran Lense

Uber metagamed against TNT/Ankh sligh/Void/Trix

REALLY LONG CARD BY CARD

Land Tax-gets those splash lands and is your engine.

Scroll Rack-3 never,ever,ever 2

Claws of Gix-with buyback spells ever increasing this is neccerary now.  Also allows you to eat your abyss when you don't need it anymore.  

Swords to Plowshares-4 is a must with all the freaking aggro out there. 3 at your folly.  

Humility-your critters are now all vanilla 1/1's.  And abyss can now chew them up while you wait.

Abyss-replaces both WoG's get it out early and many critter decks will scoop.

Balance-Duh!

Argivian Find-they recurr artifacts and enchantments... your deck is all artifacts and enchantments.  And it becomes white ritual when you have a lotus in the graveyard

Replenish-3 is the right number.  lets you top deck it after removal/discard.

Bloodmoon- I hope no one questions this maindeck anymore

Tormod's Crypt-no reccursion for you, but hey find lets me reccur it at you

Ivory Mask-stops discard, cap, crypt, twist, combo kills, burn, and so much more, and doesn't need to be fed mana.

Aura of Silence-3 for the main, seals for speed in the side

Story Circle- just too damn versatile, stops burn, critters, etc.

Enlightened Tutor-Duh!

Orim's Chant-the white timewalk! stops critters for a turn.  lets you mess with combo trying to go off.  makes control cringe...

Sacred Mesa-you will eventually have to kill you opponent

Lotus Petal-you could run a mox ruby and a jet... or just run the petal, gives you white, black and red.  argivian find become a mana filter for white.

Mox Diamond-see above

Black Lotus-Duh!

Mox Pearl-Duh!

Sol Ring-Duh!

Wasteland-2 is enough if you are running bloodmoon

Strip Mine- Duh!

Swamp-tax finds me! I cannot be wasted!

Mountain-see above

Plains-Duh!

Side board

Replenish- the more the merrier.  4 total helps you against discard, control, and lets you abuse auras and seals

Humility-lets you get one out quicker against super fast aggro

Blood Moon-two is better than one! I think 3 is too mant.

Tower-this is just silly stuff but it wrecks sligh, ankh, and trix  

Seal-void, gloom, dystopia, maskanought, TNT, Trix, random crap you didn't think of... stasis?

Crypt-kills fast graveyard combo dead.  reanimator, TNT, oath... wild zombies!

Thran Lense-anarchy doesn't work anymore, neither does dystopia.  

Some of you may notice I removed Library of alexandria...
I just have never seen it that useful in the deck.  I needed the room and it was the thing that didn't make the cut everything else was needed much more.  

An interesting idea since we are running claws of gix now is empyrial armor for the faster kill.  incase you have to replenish with it in the graveyard you can always sac it if they have a critter and you don't.

This concludes our broadcast day...\n\n

[Skeeter974]

humilty + the abyss is overkill. The abyss is unneccasary in parfait because parfait already can handle aggro very well. And with the wrath of gods in instead of the abyss it will work out better.

"The Abyss is a great card but is not needed in Parfait" -Me

But go ahead and be rogue, it doesnt seem like a horrible thing to do but it isnt necessary becuase you have enough "crowd control" as it is with WoGs in there

[Anonymous]

Skeeter974 that's what I am trying to say, abyss can easily replace the 2 wogs since it is findable and replenishable.  I have always been a rogue builder and will die a rogue builder.  

I look at it this way everyone thought it was crazy to run bloodmoon main, "no red in a mono white deck!"  Well my build is mono white with a red dot and a black dot...

I think once people start trying it out they will see the strength of it.  

It sounds janky but the addition of black also allows for other sideboard options, namely megrim... with madness and cycling becoming more and more powerful in other formats some decks will eventually slip over to type one.  

the ability to splash powerful enchantments from two other colors makes parfait even more versatile.

red gives you other fun enchantments like scald to hose monoblue and keeper.  Make keeper tap 5 lands to buyback a disenchant effect that will not resolve because of the claws anyway.

end transmission...

[Anonymous]

I realize that you are playing parfait with a dot of red and a dot of black but seriously what is the point.... If you are still thinking of an answer i will answer myself.  There is absolutly no reason.  Wrath works and you should not get rid of 2 mass destructions spells for 1 easily killable enchantment that does not have an imediate mutalation.  In addition to all of that your abyss does not hit the TnT's critters or any control creatures like morphling or masticore.  And if you are truly obsessed with using your abyss play a deck that can make good use of it.

[Anonymous]

Make good use of it?
An enchantment based deck were everyone runs 4 finds, 2-3 replenishes, and enlightened tutor....
Abyss makes much more sense than wrath when you start to think about it.

Wrath of God: no way to tutor for it, no way to reccur it.  Duress/hymn/hyppie hits it, it is gone for good.  Good players will simply not over extend their hand. granted humility makes this another issue since you have to mass cast critters to out race humility...

Abyss: Continuous effect.  It keeps going.  Under humility it wipes out everything except the vanilla 1/1 artifact critters.  the abyss is feared by aggro players.  Aggro decks must be built around it.  Suicide, Sligh, Stompy, TNT, Reanimator etc.  are all built with ways to either try to out race it or work around it.  Abyss is a powerhouse.   If they durees, hymn, hyppie it, you can always replenish/argivian find it.  You cannot do that with wrath.  

I have never in all the years I have played magic seen anyone scoop because of a wrath of god.  
I have seen numerous times where the abyss has made the other guy scoop.

Its black so it works under janky stuff like gloom, dystopia, and contamination.  Wrath doesn't.

Parfait choose seal of cleansing over disenchant because it is an enchantment.  Parfait can reuse enchantments.

I've been playtesting it and so far it was been working out much better than wrath.  Wrath they can recover from, abyss is much more difficult.   Vs a friend playing stompy I dropped the abyss first turn and he just scooped.  
  
and vs TNT it kills their welders!!!!!
now you can save your swords for their beef.

Oh well like I said before there was a lot of opposition to bloodmoon when it first came out.  

"its not white"
"wasteland does that job already"
"you can't cast it reliably"

abyss is a continuous sweeper that you can reuse after they "easily" kill it.  

WoG gives lets you catch your breath,
abyss lets you sit back and relax.

seriously give it a try before you bash it.  I thought the blood moon was total jank till I actually ran it and tried it out.  It was a bomb against non basic lands.  Wasteland one time effect.  Blood moon, continuous...

-this concludes our broadcast day-

[Redman]

Against the decks that you mentioned (TnT/Sligh/Trix/Void), Wrath of God is superior to the Abyss. TnT plays mostly Artifact creatures, Sligh can play several creatures at once, and Void can kill the Abyss. Also, against such decks, I don't think Claws are neccesary...maybe they should go to the sideboard.

And to clarify, yes they can recover from Wrath, but the idea is that it buys you time to build up the rest of your fortress. If they try to play around Wrath, again, that buys you time.  Abyss only rewards them from playing out as many creatures as they can.

I also think 3 Replenishes is too many in the maindeck, even against tons of control decks. Two is the most i'd think I'd want to see.  More than that will sit in your hand dead a little too often (you don't have _that_ many enchantments).

Ivory Mask should probably be left in the Sideboard as well, I'd think.  By the time you get it out agianst black, they've hit you with discard already, and Sligh has done most of its damage (also, Story Circle is better against Sligh)

Usually one Seal of Cleansing is reccomended over the 3rd Aura of Silence, just to give you something a little cheaper.

And finally, if you have a Library of Alexandria, play it. It's not one of the Power 10 for nothing. That card can singlehandedly win games for you, no joke. Especially when you have Land Tax in the deck. There are many other cards I'd cut before Library.

One other thing...you really shoudl have a Zuran Orb, if not two. They help you stay alive long enough to get going as well as working very well with Land Tax.\n\n

[Anonymous]

I actually use the replenishes in a dual function.  Recovery from removal/counter and acceleration.  I will often overtax/rack dump enchantments then replenish them back into play.  

The mask is main because it stops so much more than just discard and burn.  Crypt, cap, and cursed scroll are just a few things that is also stops.

The admittably psychotic amount of seals are there against trix/void/tnt and random combo.  Parfait is very weak against combo.   The towers are there for their dual function of eliminating sligh and trix.

Good sligh players will run anarchy and better ones will run thran lense.  Humility stops their shamans.  Abyss removes them.  Sit back on the fat, fat towers. Tower is faster and does not require mana.  

My build of parfait requires a different playing style than traditional parfait.  

I again has anyone actually playtested this yet?  It really is effective if you play it the right way.  Nothing give you the breathing room you need to set up like an early humility or abyss.  Now you have both increasing your chances of gettign your bombs out.  

On the LoA issue, I realize it flys in the face of convention to remove it but I never really use it in parfait.  I am either aggressively casting things or I want colored mana instead.  When I tax, end of turn the extra card I could then draw is one that I have already obviously deemed unnessasary to my hand.

Just try it out, then come back.

-end transmission-

[Anonymous]

@ redman, a short note,  Replenish can not be condidered a dead card as against control it is very very usefull, and as whitetrash points out, against a deck without counters or if u have an abayance or chant, than you can overtax and then return a bunch of enchantments to play at a low cost.  Running 3 works for me.

@Whitetrash, possibly longer, ppl do not often scoop because of a wrath, but most decks won't scoop from a single abyss as all decks have a way to get rid of it.  I guess that a stompy player might because in the time it take him to get a lyrist or similar critter and another creature in on the same turn, you will have a swords.  While your friend might scoop i doubt most ppl would as the abyss might slow the game down, it does not garentee your victory.  And seriously how often do you get a firsrt turn abyss, pretty damn rare.  And you keep saying that you are being uncontentional but nobody reading this cares that you want to go against the grain (pardon the cliche) just to feel like you are the original, and thus cuased a trend in a great deck.  And you never answered my question about what you are going to do for an abyss proof creature, i guess u think that the humility and abyss counts as a answer but it sure as hell does not.  With 1 tutor, i doubt that you can consistantly pull both the abyss and the humility as you run 1 of each.  YOU DON'T HAVE ENCHANTRESS' SEARCH POTENTIAL.  I hope you understand that, and an early abyss proff creature seems like it would cause serious havoc for you.  

Now to counter a possible argument you might make
Playing parfait does give you the potential to draw 4 cards per turn or more, yet it is still a combo that can't be garenteed every game.  So you might be able to thin your deck with just a tax, and you might draw the rack or your abyss, but by then the control player should have a handful of counters or have dropped a killer.  And the aggro player has you dead or very close.

Yeah and about the whole humility and abyss togather giving you the ability to kill everything except the now 1/1 artifact creatures, i have to say that ALL decks should have killedc you by the time you get both 4cc enchantments on the board, or can easily kill one or both, and/or counter

[Radjammin]

Maybe before you guys have a long drawn out argument you should ask yourself are these changes nessassary?

This is my opionion from playing Parfiat against many different deck types with it's current deck listing.

1. Parfait can beat control decks that do not attack it's hand.
2. Parfait can aftersideboard beat combo decks that do not carry heavy coutnerspell or discard.
3. Parfait can easily beat TNT as long as it doesn't remove it's win conditions from the game.
4.Parfait mana base is the most consistant of all decks with land tax and basic plains being it's focal point, only rely on artifact mana as a splash.
5.Parfait is not suseptable to non-basic hate cards.

Now the 2 cards you wanted to add were Blood Moon and The Abyss.

Well blood moon would help you most with control decks.  You would be able to lock out their mana successfully.  This would help you with the Keeper matchup, actually casting a threat they would be scared of, a threat that could be replenish and argivian found, and successfully locking them out of colored mana, execept for moxes.

It could also be seen as a dead card vs aggro, as it only removes TnT end game, but Humility can do this already.

Abyss is even less usefull.  It only effects aggro and sligh.  Most Aggro decks have developed to be resiliant to The Abyss and Sligh couldn't care less.

So then you need to as yourself who are you planning to beat with these cards?  Newbies? Or is your field completely aggro/sligh or Completely Control.  
You might want to main deck for these matchups specifically.

But a normal deck listing of Parfait doesn't benift from The Abyss at all and the decision on the nessessity for Blood Moon Main deck is still out.  I would suggest you not to main deck it if you fear your Sligh and Sui in your enviroment as it is a dead card.  If these decks are at a limit or you have a heavy powered enviroment with lots of non-basic it surly won't hurt to start it main deck for a chance to win the first game.

You noted Wrath of God is a dead card as you can't search for it. It sucks that you can't search for it, but you need a removal effect.  People have been trying out a second Humility in it's place  which might be a good idea and add a Pariah for the second wrath.  These changes would increase the usefullness of the Replenishes but I cannot see taking the maindeck number over 2 as it is not a card I want to draw in the early game, not do I want to see it in the first coulple of cards drawn.  Lets not forget we don't always have the tax rack combo going.

If there was an effect in white that was like The Abyss then yes, but as it is too hard to produce black mana consistantly I would have to vote no on this.  The blood moon is your choice.

[Anonymous]

Uh...whoever said that parfait doesn't have search ability...Do you know what the tax-rack engine does?  It makes people waste a counter on a one mana enchantment that you have 4 of.  It makes people say things like "Uh oh," and with good reason.

I don't agree with Whitetrash's ideology that redundancy is god.  In my opinion, you should either play 1) the abyss, which is out of color, out of style, and not as useful as alternative 2) humility, which does all of the above and helps parfait play in the spirit of The Deck by stalling the opponent.  Let's face it, if you haven't been able to control stompy (and, christ, with the anti-aggro of parfait, you should have something going), abyss or humility isn't going to save you.  The wrath does.  Who the heck cares about scoop value?  I care about winning games.

Blood moon is nice, and is an incredible silver bullet against keeper (what parfait really needs).  The chants combined with the land tax that you should already be using without remorse makes blood moon a nice card.

I think that another card could be used instead of the abyss, but the theory is really nice.  Any enchantment that controls creatures in such a manner is good, but wrath can save the game.

Heh, Whitetrash's comment about the use of replenish and "over-taxing" (although I prefer the term "strategic taxing") to drop the enchantments in the graveyard is golden.  Just hope that Tormod does make an appearance.

Amerek

[PsychoCid]

Just pointing out that the other issue about LoA is that it's basically the only Wasteland target in the deck.

As I hear it, K-Run is about the only person left that still runs it.

[Anonymous]

The environment around here is very random.  Actually it could almost be seen as some idealistic metagame since you never know what decks are going to show up.  Abyss is really good against random stuff and it is good against monoblack.
Grow and zoo decks are always running around here.  

The arguement that decks already have ways of removing it so you shouldn't run it is really not a good one.  All aggro decks expext swords (hell I used to tally in the life from a stp'd negator everytime I goldfished my suicide black), just because they expect it doesn't mean you shouldn't play it.  

Martel:  I cannot think of many abyss proof critters that are really a threat (aside from TNT's). Multani, Morphling, ?.  all of the problack ones can be swords'd.  Artifat ones can be swords'd and aura's or seal'd.  Nimble mongoose and Blurred mongoose are not really threats.  Crypt shrinks the nimble and blurred gets chump blocked by a pony.  

This whole thing was simply an attempt to get people trying other things.  To experiment.  Parfait is not set in stone.  IT is evolving.  Don't simply dismiss new ideas and say you know they will not work until you have actually tried them.  

People flipped out when keeper took out green.  "Regrow and sylvan are neccesary".   Actually they flipped out before and instantly dismissed yawg's will.  "But it removes them from the game!".  Keeper is now running smoother than ever with out green and no one missed it.  

Oh well I will keep running it until I start having problems.  

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and replies.  Sorry if I sounded hostile at any point I just hate it when people immediately assume that something is wrong just because it is different.  

On a side note I have also been playtesting with a single empyrial armor.  With land tax it gives you a huge pony to block and swing with.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to read this.  Despite any accidic seeming comments I really do appreciate it.

-end transmission-

[MoreFling]

Whitetrash : I suggest you read my article on parfait in the extreme vintage forum.

I'm sure you'll find it an interesting read.

[Radjammin]

Quote (Guest @ Jan. 13 2003,18:43)

Quote It makes people waste a counter on a one mana enchantment that you have 4 of.  It makes people say things like "Uh oh," and with good reason.

Who counters Land Tax?  Who cares how many plains you have out or in your hand.  Everyone knows that they will counter your scroll rack, that's why some never versions run 3 Scroll Rack, a redundant artifact that does next to nothing in mult.

Quote
Blood moon is nice, and is an incredible silver bullet against keeper (what parfait really needs).  The chants combined with the land tax that you should already be using without remorse makes blood moon a nice card.

The reason Blood moon makes a better silver bullet then the Cap vs control is that it is an enchantment, and cost 1 less with no further mana need.  All these factor allow it to win out vs the Cap, even though it isn't even white.

Quote
Heh, Whitetrash's comment about the use of replenish and "over-taxing" (although I prefer the term "strategic taxing") to drop the enchantments in the graveyard is golden.  

Right you are.  The biggest mistake new parfiat players make is taxing too much.  I personally thing you never want your plains in the graveyard unless you are going to immediately dig them back.  I usually make it a rule of thumb to only tax my hand back to 7 before the draw, assumming I can at least play 1 card a turn.  If can play more then 1 card that turn I caculate for that.  I never try to discard.  Your trick about discarding all your enchantments might work against black or TnT (sorcery.dec) but aginast a control player, they will just laugh at you and counterspell your replenish and thank you for getting ride of all your irritating enchantments for him.
Lets not forget the role of Replenish in control.  Your not playing old school type 2 replenish combo.  Replenish is a recovery card, not a combo card for your deck.  If you throw them all in the grave all they have to do is coutnerspell the replenish.  If you play each threat, get them countered, then your replenish has alot better change of going threw.

[Anonymous]

Puschkin: Sorry about that... blantant attempt to make people read.  I won't do it again.

Morefling: I have read your primer and K-Runs, and I am a big reader of all of the parfait posts.   Parfait is a lot like keeper were a couple of card differences between builds make them almost 2 different decks.  I liked your article and I'm sure you get the same flak from people about your card choices.  

"Digger is too slow"
"you don't need 2 bloodmoons"
"12 plains is way too few"
"3 waste/1 strip 2 blood moon is overkill"
"claws no no replacement for zurb"  
"blah, blah, blah"

I must say I do like karmic justice but is suffers from the same problem I always had when I tried to run T's response in Keeper.  I always drew it after their removal had hit.

Radjammin: I was not advovating overtaxing to dump lands.  I was saying I often use it as an aggressive strategy against aggro decks to drop multiple silver bullets at once.  Against control I'll just cast them one after another, draw out counters, then later chant, chant, replenish!