Psychic Vortex = Super sweet Tech!

[Anonymous]

Let me start off by saying this post is not Parfait as K-Run plays it, but many of the suggested cards are Parfait in nature or in parfait decks... Don't want to offend any diehard parfait players by my ideas... thanks

I have never seen Psychic Vortex used in a deck, but it is some awsome tech!  

Psychic Vortex   2UU
Enchantment  
Cumulative Upkeep - Draw a card.
At the end of your turn, sacrifice a land and discard your hand.

This card has some amazing possibilities! While I was trying to find some new tech cards to put in my Solitary Confinement deck I came across this card... It is everything I was looking for. I wanted a card that let me cycle through my library as fast a possible in order to negate the effect of solitary confinement. I originally had Anvil of Bogardan, but quickley realized solitary confinement did not allow you to have a draw step. Not having a draw step, sadly, got rid of many draw cards. Psychic Vortex is a perfect fit.

Psychic Vortex also has amazing synergy with many different cards already on the "watch list" for my personal Parfait build. Some of these cards include -

Library of Leng - This makes Psychic Vortex's discard step do very little to you as it allows you to put all the cards discarded ontop of your library.

Land Tax - This greatly helps minimize the threat of destroying one of your lands each turn which the Vortex causes. It also turns the vortex into a Scroll Rack of Sorts... letting you shuffle the cards put ontop of your library due to Leng.

Solitary Confinement - Vortex lets you laugh at Confinements "drawback" of not letting you have a drawstep and allows you to play Confinement even if you don't have your kill in hand. Vortex makes Confinement a lot less situational.

Spirit Cairn - Vortex allows you to make mad amounts of spirits for one white mana each. With vortex out, spirit cairn tends to be much more efficient than Mesa. Also is your kill.

Planar Birth - Discarding/destroying your lands can become a good thing with this card. You can totally surprise your opponent with about 10 more lands than you had the turn before. Helps you play the cards Vortex Gives you before they're gone.

Ivory Tower - I'm not positive this would work, but I think it would. If you stack the Vortex and the Tower's abilities correctley then you are able to gain insane amounts of life... maybe a good enough life buffer to instead run Serra Avatar as your kill...?

Now for the super secret awsome synergy tech... The new "Words of " cards...

This may be very hard, but if you could somehow find a stable mana base, then the words of whatever cards from onslaught would be a perfect fit! Istead of drawing X amount of life, you gain X times 5 life (if you have enough mana)... or return X target permanents to their owners hand! With red you could deal X times 2 damage, or green with X 2/2 creatures!  

Now keep in mind I have not playtested some of these ideas and this is still a very rough idea... but I can see it having a future! (even if it's a small future)...  

What do you think? Please post any and all comments... Thanks!

[Anonymous]

oops...

Quote  Istead of drawing X amount of life, you gain X times 5 life (if you have enough mana)... or return X target

I meant to put -

Istead of drawing X amount of CARDS , you gain X times 5 life (if you have enough mana)... or return X target...


And remember, cumulative upkeep is... well cumulative... and with multiple Vortexs' you can be drawing like 10 cards a turn!

[Anonymous]

Multiple Vortexs is also a very good way of decking yourself.

It looks like a fun deck. It sure would go for the throat quickly once you get a cairn going.

Cumulative upkeep: put a 1/1 white spirit token into play!

[Anonymous]

Actualy u wouldnt deck urself as u can stop paying the cumulative upkeep whenever u want...

[Freddie]

I am taking a stab at a decklist:

Land Tax: 4
Seal of Cleansing: 2
Solitary Confinement: 2
Spirit Cairn: 1
Sacred Messa: 1
Humility: 1
Story Circle: 1
Celestial Dawn: 1
Orim's Chant: 4
Replenish: 3
Argivian Find: 2
Swords to Plowshares: 2
Planar Birth: 2
Enlightened Tutor: R
Balance: R

Scroll Rack: 3
Library of Leng: 1
Soldevi Digger: 1
Claw of Gix: 1

Psycic Vortex: 2
Words of War: 1

Sol Ring: R
Black Lotus: R
Mox Pearl: R
Mox Ruby: R
Mox Sapphire: R
Mox Diamond: R
Lotus Petal: R
Stripmine: R
LOA: R
Bazar of Bagdahd: 1
Undiscovered Paradise: 1
Island: 1
Mountain: 1
Plains: 10


This is with no testing, but with just the core idea in mind.

I added a Bazzar of Baghdad to have the ability to get the vortex into the grave then replenish it out, but I am unsure about it.

It also has a synergy to be able to (along with a words of war) do 4 points a turn, as long as you don't card about the cards in your hand.

I also added the Celestial Dawn for the ability to cast this stuff with out the color requirements, and it would also turn the damage from words of War into white sources, in case of the off chance of the MD cop Red.

Just a thought.

-Freddie

[Anonymous]

I like the deck freddie, but with solitary confinement, do you really need story circle/humility?

The great thing about this deck is that it doesn't care about its hand which could be a good thing... like abusing Null Brooch. Null Brooch is a little pricy, but once you have the confinement out all you need to do is keep it alive. Null brooch helps you do that. (of course, you have to watch out for TnT's Lyrist, but for that you can sideboard in Cursed Totem/humility if you feal you need it.) Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

This is a very rough version of my deck, it has very little playtesting done. But none the less, here it is in a mini-mini-mini primer form.

Engine #1 (Do I have to explain?)
4x Land Tax
3x Scroll Rack
2x Claws of Gix

Engine #2
3x Solitary Confinement (Your Defense, this keeps you alive)
3x Psychic Vortex (To fuel your kill cards+solitary confinement)
3x Library of Leng (to negate the vortex's ability)

Kill
2x Spirit Cairn (more efficient than mesa in this deck)
*1x Words of War (incase your creatures don't work)

Recursion
*1x Feldon's Cane (Helps get lands back into library)
*2x Planar Birth (Helps late game get lands in)
4x Argivian Find (get things back)
*1x Replenish (Get dead enchantments into play)

Utility
4x Orim's Chant (Gets key cards through counterwalls)
1x Enlightend Tutor (Finds key cards)
*2x Null Brooch (An orim's chant on steroids)

Land (This deck is VERY mana hungry)
*1x Lion's Eye Diamond (works w/ kill w/out penalties)
1x Mana Crypt (artifact mana)
1x Sol Ring (artifact mana)
1x Mox Diamond (artifact mana)
*1x Mana Vault (getsnull brooch into play faster)
2x Mountain
3x Island
14x Plains

Sideboard
3x Blood Moon
3x Tormod's Crypt
2x Cursed Totem
1x Jester's Cap
3x Defence Grid
1x Null Brooch
2x Grindstone

I can totally understand if you want to call this deck suicide... cause that is exactly what it is, a control suicide deck. The whole point of this deck is to get solitary confinement into play, and keep it in play until you can overrun your opponent with spirit tokens or burn them down. That is why I don't have any creature control, solitary confinement does that for me. This is more of a survival deck then a control deck. This deck tries to make a near unbreakable defense and slowly build an offense... like Parfait, but not at all like it.


* = unsure of card in the deck

Words of War- I'm not sure if I should just totally drop red or not... and am not sure if this card helps that much/more than spirit cairn...

Feldon's Cane- bad synergy with the rest of recursion cards... but helps all around with vortex...

Planar Birth- unsure of number needed...

Replenish- Unsure if needed at all with low enchantment count

Null Brooch- Unsure if its to pricy or not to play effectivly in this mana hungry deck, but once out secures the lock.

Lion's Eye Diamond- Don't call me crazy! I'm unpowered and this actually helps pay for Spirit cairn and Words of War without penalty (when you activate them you already have no hand).

Mana Vault- My attempt to get null brooch into play faster... damage doesn't matter much sue to confinement



Any and all help is great! Thanks for all those who reply.

[Anonymous]

oops! Forgot balance!!! Drop a plains for a balance....   

[MoreFling]

Wouldn't you rather make this 4 Replenish, 4 Bazaar, maybe with a few Squees in the mix?

I saw you listed squees in previous decks you made, and it seems like a perfect drawing engine in this deck. this will also save you the trouble of finding 2 blue mana for the vortex.

Again, however, I doubt you should call this parfait. Since this is REALLY another type of deck, and it's your brainchild, I suggest you come up with a better name.
Untill you do, I'd rather call it Psychic Confinement or something like that. (I'm not too great with catchy names).

Looks like a fun deck to play, but do you reckon it has any chances in a half-serious metagame?

[Anonymous]

Actually my name for the deck (until i can think of something better) is Solitary Vortex... lol you were close!

And yeah my old solitary confinement deck ran squees and no blue, but I was never happy with the deck as it was to easily disrupted and having no hand to stop the diruption ussually hurt. I just never found it to work very well with bazaar either because if i didn't have enough squees or cards in hand I ended up discarding the cards i drew. What I needed was a draw engine (besides tax/rack). I think I am going to totally drop blue, that should make it easier to get my 2 blue mana for vortex and just switch to B2B...

And yes, I do think this deck has a chance in my meta at least! (1 or 2 keeper, 2 sui black, 1 BBS, 1 sligh, some rogue (sp? why can't i spell that word right!), stompy and some other stuff... no TnT or gro, not much combo... You sure like to put peoples ideas and decks down, don't you morefling!

Jeeze... but anyway, once null brooch, psychic vortex and solitary confinement are out, it's basically game over... I know that sounds hard to do, but once psychic vortex is out it is much easier throw in some orims chants and your good to go!

Like I said, this deck is very rough, so don't expect all the kinks to be out yet... new ideas are always rumbling around my head and this is not the final version of this deck, thats for sure! I have already decided to add abeyance in the sideboard... but whatever, you can have your opinions about this deck if you want.

Thanks

ps that thing about this deck NOT being parfait at the top of the post was put because I know people will get mad even if I mention parfait in a thread with a deck that isn't parfait... so please, I know this deck IS NOT parfait.

[Anonymous]

why do i always make obvious mistakes in my posts?! What I ment was that I am going to drop red from this deck... not blue

[MoreFling]

Dropping red seems fine to me, and er... where did I put your deck down?
I actually said I liked it, and the only reason I asked about it's viability is because I was curious about it.
I'm currently thinking about constructing my own list with the bazaar / squee engine and the rest of your deck (no scroll racks however) and see what I can do. I would rather play on the Replenish Combo then on casting it individually, since that is too slow while you have little protection against an Aggro horde (you only have chants and solitary confinement, which could hurt early developement without active tax)
Words of War is still a nice 1-off to have if the spirit cairn thing is not working.

Come to think of it, another thing is that IF you are going to use this with Bazaar/Squee as engine, do you actually need Land Tax?
Maybe that allows you to play duals / fetchers and smooth out the manabase a lot.
This is pretty much unaccounted for, just an idea I'd like to throw into the mix.

[Anonymous]

I really like this, Urza. I think you may have helped me go into the testing phase for a non-domain deck. (I've decided to let someone else in my area try and pick it up for awhile, and see what he can do with it.) But anyway, I've decided to run it like the old U/W Replenish decks from Urza era t2. Well, anyway, here's my tentative build.

Mana(27)
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
6 Plains
7 Island
1 Serra's Sanctum
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire

Bursting Out(9)
4 Replenish
1 Windfall
1 Frantic Search
3 Attunement

The Engine(14)
2 Mana Flare
2 Library of Leng
4 Solitary Confinement
3 Psychic Vortex
3 Spirit Carin

Protection(10)
4 Force of Will
4 Abeyance
2 Counterspell

This is just my build off the top of my head. I'll put it together tonight and test it tomorrow sometime. I'd really like to gather any criticism anyone may have on my build, so fell free to say what you want.

As for anyone questioning the mana flares, I think that they enchance the explosive nature of the Vortex/Carin interaction, and since there is no intention to hardcast any of the enchantments, the red mana shouldn't be an issue.

[Anonymous]

man, i'm just never happy! I am thinking about adding in sterling grove, but i feal the mana base will be to weak if I do. If i added them in I could safley remove the null broochs... but i'm not to sure... whatever... I'll post again tomarrow, its late and i need to start my homework... oh, i like the deck Ami! It looks good!

[Anonymous]

Debuting - Lemmings.Dec (name subject to change)

I've revampeed the deck a little...

Engine #1
4x Land Tax
3x Scroll Rack
2x Claws of Gix

Engine #2
3x Solitary Confinement
4x Psychic Vortex
3x Library of Leng
2x Words of Worship

Kill
2x Phyrexian Processor/Spirit Cairn (switches)

Recursion
1x Planar Birth
4x Argivian Find
1x Soldevi Digger

Utility
4x Orim's Chant
1x Enlightend Tutor
1x Balance
2x Null Brooch

Land
1x Mana Crypt
1x Sol Ring
1x Mox Diamond
1x Mana Vault
1x Lotus Petal
1x Marble Diamond
1x Sky Diamond
4x Island
12x Plains

Sideboard
3x Cursed Totem
1x Jester's Cap
2x Test of Endurance
2x Grindstone
2x Null Brooch
3x Defense Grid
2x Abeyance

The same explenations for the cards as above... except a few

New Cards #1 - I was never completely happy with the lock because if for some reason solitary confinement got disrupted you had nothing to fall back on. Thats why I changed my kill to Phyrexian Processor and Test in the Side they have good synergy with Words of Worship/Psychic Vortex

New Cards #2 - Diamond mana things - These are equivelent to a poor mans mox... but surprisingly they work very well in this deck! I need all the artifact mana producers I can get! And these help by giving me colors I actually need!

Defense Grid - I want to be able to say that this deck has a strong matchup vs. Counter Control decks! Its got basically all of aggro covered with solitary confinement... so I have lotsof sideboard and main hate towards control (ex. Null Brooch, Orim's chant, Grindstone, Test of endurance, Defense Grid)

Any other new cards should be obvious... like balance and stuff... ok... comments?

[kl0wn]

One of the best kill cards in a Psychic Vortex deck with Library of Leng is Windfall.

EOT, you put your hand on top of your library with LoL, and keep doing it until you have about 40 or so cards in hand. Then you Windfall, discarding your entire hand back to the top of your library, then drawing them again while simultaneously decking your opponent.

This also allows you to conentrate on protecting your Vortex until you can kill your opponent since you'll have quite a few open slots as you only need one actual card to kill them. Your opponent will also have no chance of stopping the Windfall (assuming you play with counterspells) since you'll have about 40 cards in your hand when you cast it.

The main problem with this strategy is protecting your Vortex and Confinement with no cards in hand and few land in play. Running lots of artifact mana and Null Brooch could be a good way to do it since the Brooch forces you to discard and Library of Leng lets you put the cards back on top of your library if they try to kill your Vortex on your turn. Arcane Labratory could supplement this strategy as you can always counter their one spell per turn.

This would also give you the ability to go down to only two colors; white for the Confinement and Replenishes if you use them. Also if you use Replenishes, you could even run Intuition for tutoring and Accumulated Knowledge for extra card drawing.

Of course, by that logic, you would probably be better off playing PandeBurst.

[Anonymous]

Just letting you know that I'm still here, and still testing the deck. So far, I've been able to win every game I've played against aggro, with the exception of one against TnT and one against Red Stompy, though I've been able to beat them both in other games. Although I've only tested against it once, Keeper is a real problem, and I've decided that it might be beneficial to run 2-3 Sterling Groves as additional protection for the combo in a sitiuation such as that. More testing is needed. Also, thanks for the tip Kl0wn, I'll give Windfall a try.