New Combo: NotLong.dec OR Draw7.dec

[Smash]

If you are that worried about losing both win conditions, throw in a death wish ...


So which deck do you like more, crazy_draw_7.dec or long_with_deathwish.dec?

[Xhad]

If you are that worried about losing both win conditions, throw in a death wish ...

If the purpose of the Death Wish is to get back your removed win conditions, why not just add another Tendrils to the deck so you can cast it for 4 mana instead of 7?

[Jacob Orlove]

If you are that worried about losing both win conditions, throw in a death wish ...

If the purpose of the Death Wish is to get back your removed win conditions, why not just add another Tendrils to the deck so you can cast it for 4 mana instead of 7?

Death Wish can fetch useful SB cards, while also functioning as a backup kill.

[Bram]

@ Morefling:

Yes, it does in fact look a lot like one of our TPS builds (in fact it's only about 3 cards off), but they are kind of a big deal. The Fastbond sits  pretty in this build. This could work.

[Ric_Flair]

Steve,

Any thoughts of running [card]Tinder Wall[/card] as a sort of bad Ritual?  I mean with ESG's and Chromatic Spheres the G cc wouldn't be that hard to get and the RR would be easily converted.  Just a thought though.  I am still thinking about the deck, formulating a better understanding of how it works.  More later.

[Smmenen]

I would probably run Chrome Mox and LED in the maindeck first.

Steve

[Jawman16]

I dont know what TMD Uber-list of this deck is but I ran a version I put together in a local tournament and won handily.  Cabal Ritual is a must have in this deck.  I run three and have found them to be awesome.  At the worst they net one Black mana and up the storm which is more then I can say for Elvish Spirit Guide.  At their best they are better then Lions Eye Diamond ever was especially off a Yawg Win.  I had upwards for 15 Black floating in multiple games b/c of the Ritual.  I think it is going to be a staple in any combo deck for the near future.  Now with this said I do not run run as many Returns as Steve's deck does.  I run one so I am not always shuffling my 'yard back into the deck.  

     Could this deck benefit from some of the more classic Academy cards like Candelabra, Mind over Matter, Meditate etc...  It might be something to look into.  I also have more freedom in the deck since my Meta is control light and I do not have to MD the Swarms.

     Does Trinisphere wreck this deck?  I could see that card being a huge problem.

[Forgotten One]

If you fear removing your win conditions with Diminishing Returns, here is a suggestion that would make that a non-issue.  Don't play with Diminishing Returns at all.

Essentially, you take Smmenen's list with -2 Chromatic Sphere, -3 Diminishing Returns, +1 Mystical Tutor, +1 Regrowth, +1 Recall, +2 Forgotten Lore.

Why?
-2 Chromatic Sphere: The shift to a more green based deck makes Chromatic Sphere less needed.

-3 Diminishing Returns: The reason I'm posting this build is to offer an alternative to playing this card.

+1 Mystical Tutor: Timetwister is now the primary focus of the deck.  With more of a reliance on Timetwister, having Mystical Tutor is a big plus.

+1 Regrowth, +1 Recall: Despite the many arguments to unrestrict Regrowth and Recall, the reason these two cards are still restricted is primarily because of Timetwister.  These are your primary ways to get Timetwister back in your hand.  There is enough broken stuff in the deck to make these cards worthwhile.

+2 Forgotten Lore: Becomes a Regrowth for G after you cast Timetwister, since it's the only card in your yard.  On the surface, this card is awful, but if you think hard about it, this makes perfect sense.  It also becomes really good after you cast Yawg's Win.  However, if nobody likes the thought of polluting their decks with Forgotten Lore, playing 1 or 2 Diminishing Returns may be a middle-ground alternative.  The point is that Regrowth type effects are busted in a Draw 7 type of deck.

Another card to consider is Zuran Orb.  Saccing your tapped lands to Zuran Orb before twisting gets your lands back into your deck so you can draw and play them again with Fastbond.  Plus the life gain offsets the damage caused by Fastbond.  And if you play with Diminishing Returns, it also helps to pad your deck with some land in hopes that it will lessen your chances of removing Burning Wish or Tendrils.

Well, those were just some thoughts.  I'm sure this will generate some comments, so let's have it.

[Smmenen]

The entire point of the deck is to abuse Diminishing Returns and Dark Ritual.   And Returns is the business spell.

Steve

[vampyre_apocalypse]

Since you are removing 10 cards from your library every time a returns resolves, doesn't it get more and more dangerous to repeatedly cast it (as I assume you must do), in terms of removing the 2 win conditions?

The first time it resolves, ~16% of your deck is removed. The second time, another 20% is removed, then another 25%, and so on. Or are you banking on drawing moxen and dark rituals off the Returns, then tutoring up burning wish or tendrils?

I also have to agree with others that Cabal Ritual seems like a better fit than ESG. I know it has no synergy with all the twisting effects, but it boosts storm, provides at least 2 more mana than ESG (of a color you need, no less), and you can cast all your cabal rituals off one dark ritual, so it's not like they're hard to cast. I think the most important aspect of cabal ritual though is that it boosts storm so you rely less on Diminishing Returns, and therefore run less risk of removing your win conditions (provided you have some other way to get to them which shouldn't be THAT hard).

[thecapn]

Long was built around the synergy between Yawgmoth's Will and Lion's
Eye Diamond and consequently didn't care too much for Draw 7s. But
what about a deck that is overloaded with inexpensive draw 7s - Here is
that deck - its the complete opposite of long, but to the logical
EXTREME.

I think people need to keep this in mind when evaluating the deck as well as the card decisions.  If you want to cut Returns check out The Perfect Storm threads...

Re: Chrome Mox vs LED
  I played a version of this deck I borrowed from a friend and tried to make the list as close as possible to this one.  I was running Chrome Mox over Mana Crypt, and I found the mox to be terrible.  I didn't ever like relying on having an extra card to imprint, and often the card I pitched wasn't a color I really wanted, so I'd definitely not cut it over LED.  Someone brought up the lack of synergy between FOW and LED, and I'd say unless the control player is playing really really tight, they usually let you know after you cast a few spells if they have a counter.  If they were smart enough to sigh and give you a disappointed thumbs up when you cast a draw 7 and then reveal the FoW in response to the LED, then you'll just have to give them props and be more careful when you use the LED next, or just side it out.  I don't think getting UUU for 0 in a deck that always wants blue floating needs much argument.

Re: Crop Rotation
   I really think that crop rotation should replace the third Chromatic Sphere.  I've often found that I don't want to filter colors for 2, since mana tends to be tight in my experience.  I don't like how it eats your rituals.  With the amount of draw 7's and brainstorms, I really seldom draw an all land and mana production hand, so I feel the card drawing ability is negligible.  Crop rotation at least adds a storm if you've got academy on the board and you rotate a random land into another random land.  If you've got academy on the board and you've got an ESG or Emerald, it filters that green into one of any color, and green is just one step above colorless and white.  And we all know what happens when crop rotation does in the best case scenario.  I mean it's restricted for a reason...

Re: Elvish Spirit Guide vs Cabal Ritual
   Like the quote above illustrates, the deck is about drawing 7, and half your draw 7's reshuffle your graveyard.  I've also found a lot of the time that I'll use all my mana to cast diminishing returns.  While there's some games where you don't care about mana cos you're just ballin', many other games you have to pay a lot of attention to it.  So I'd much rather net 1 mana for free than net 1 mana for 2.  Eliminating the ESG's also reduces the amount of mana you want/need to filter with the 1 in CRit's casting cost.  Also, in Columbus there was one game when Paul(I think wasn his name?) was racing the top of my Tog deck and his Mana Crypt with an ESG and it was a close race.  Steve pointed out that he could have also cast a second ESG he used to cast Xantid Swarm instead, which definitely would have won...  @Jawman: From what I saw your deck is a lot more like TPS, which runs the three cabal rituals. (We play in tournaments regularly)

Re: Diminishing Returns
   People seem to have a huge problem with this card, especially the draw back.  Yes, sometimes your win conditions get removed.  No, it doesn't happen often, in fact much less often than getting land screwed with *any* deck you play with.  It's math and probability, and there's always some probability in this game that you're not going to be able to win based on the cards you draw.  Also, while I cast one Diminishing Returns most games, I don't cast two that often, and I can't recall ever casting three. Something to keep in mind.  And as Steve mentioned, there's always the 2/2 beater route...
   
Having said that, I'd kind of like to fit a Death Wish somewhere in the mix.  I have no clue what to take out for it, but it does have some *synergy* with Diminishing Returns.  It allows you fetch a draw 7 removed with Returns, the 4th Returns in the SB, reduces the possibility of everyone's favorite fear, or maybe even grip some mana production like Lotus or Academy.  It's a possibility that it could replace Chromatic Sphere #2. Any thoughts???

My final thought about Returns is this: no matter what you think about it, whether you love it or hate it, can you all please comment on the fundamental differences between the Draw7 strategy and TPS's strategy?  I'd especially like to hear from all you die hard combo mages out there...  Returns is a card choice based upon a particular strategy as well as it's individual merits, so I'd like to get constructive and theoretical with this debate in an attempt to push forward the strength of combo in type 1.  Perhaps stepping back will allow us to refine our card choices, whichever the direction may be.

Peace,
   Jason

[Smmenen]

I take Jason's comments as the definitive statement of those issues.  Well said.

Steve

[Geelite]

I really do like this deck. I have been playing crop rotation over a city of brass and it has been fantastic. One problem i sometimes have is how expensive the diminishing returns are. Any way to possibly fit helm of awakening? seems like a pretty good cards for the deck but i understand that the deck is incredible tight. My build cut the FoW for 4 xantid swarms. any thoughts?

[Moxlotus]

I proxied this up and goldfished for about an hour. Wow. This deck can goldfish amazingly.  I double mulliganed and won turn 1...with 2 of the beginning cards being FOW!  This is definitely a powerful deck.  Anybody who doubts the power should just proxy it up and play with yourself (yes, I just said "play with yourself").

[Bram]

Goldfishing results on their own are meaningless. This deck has insane goldfishing results, but so did NeoLong. Matter of fact, NeoLong's goldfishing results were nearly identical to Long.dec's goldfishing results. But try playing the two in a tourney environment and you'll notice the difference

Goldfishing, IMO, proves that you're onto something. It's like, if you can't make a combo deck work when 'playing with yourself', it sucks. If you can, it doesn't prove that it's good enough; just that it's worthy of further testing.

That said, yeah, I'm kind of impressed with it's results. I'm way more hesitant of taking it a tourney than I ever was with Long or TPS, though.

[Gabethebabe]

I´ve seen lotsa people complaining about the possibility of removing your (2) win conditions from the game and Steve saying that statistics say that this doesn´t happen.

I took my magic probabilities spreadsheet and quickly came up with:

The first Diminishing Returns.
Remove 0/2 win conditions: 68.73%
Remove 1/2 win conditions: 26.64%
Remove 2/2 win conditions: 2.63%

The second Diminishing Returns.
Scenario 1. You removed 0 win conditions with the first DR (68.73%)
Remove 0/2 win conditions: 63.01%
Remove 1/2 win conditions: 33.16%
Remove 2/2 win conditions: 3.83%

Scenario 2. You removed 1 win condition with the first DR (26.64%)
Remove 0/1 win conditions: 79.59%
Remove 1/1 win conditions: 20.41%

Scenario 3. You removed 2 win conditions with the first DR (2.63%)
Remove 0/0 win conditions: 100%  :lol:

Overall:
To remove your two win conditions with 1 DR: 2.63%
To remove your two win conditions with 2 DR´s: 2.63% + 0.6873×3.83% + 0.2664×20.41% = 10.70%

[Ultima]

It seems to me that cutting the FOW's for MD swarms might be a great idea simply because of ESGs.

I think its worth a shot however if Workshop runs rampant, then FOW will definitely be the better card to run.

[Rico Suave]

I'd rather have Force against things like Root Maze, Null Rod, Pyrostatic Pillar, Spheres, Chalice, and anything else that could be dangerous.  That's very important considering this deck doesn't have the number of Wishes to find removal if need be.

[Bram]

It's true. The 'removing win conditions' was the first thingh that came to my mind when I saw Steve's list weeks ago. It has never happened.

Yestday, I had a laughable Returns I feel the need to share with you, though. I removed:
-Black Lotus
-LED
-Mana Vault
-Sol Ring
-the 3 moxen I didn't have in play
-Yawgmoth's Will
-Yawgmoth's Bargain
-Tolarian Academy

The 10 cards removed were incredibly incredibly good, but the 7 cards I drew were good enough. I still won by drawing into my Lotus Petal, Mana Crypt, single maindeck Tendrils and Burning Whishing for the Will on the last turn before the Keeper deck could deal lethal damage. That was fun

[Ultima]

These are my observations so far.

1. Crop Rotation definitely has a place.  I took the same route as Geelite by replacing a City with Rotate and have never looked back since.  It surely has improved the percentage of winning 1st turn.

2. I often have felt that 3 Returns is 1 too many.  While it is the card of attention, I often pondered about cutting 1 for a mystical tutor or Lim Dul's Vault(Vault being the better one with so many draw 7's I think)  There has defintely been many times when I wish I had more tutoring like Long or Death Long.

3. I don't think that Chrome Mox is better than LED in this deck really.  With so many Draw 7's, LED gives more mana support than the mox although I can understand the want for more acceleration to getting them going.  The only time I don't like LED is when I have to think about what color mana to sac for in response.

4. This deck definitely has an aweful time against Workshop, even more that Death Long IMO testing.  I devote almost all the SB to artifact hate except for 4 swarms, Balance, Tendrils, and the last Returns.

5. On mulligans, this is hands down the best deck ever put together period.

[Xhad]

It seems to me that cutting the FOW's for MD swarms might be a great idea simply because of ESGs.

I think its worth a shot however if Workshop runs rampant, then FOW will definitely be the better card to run.

If I were going to replace the Forces with anything, it'd be Unmask.  It seems a lot of the time if there's a card in my hand I can't immediately cast to any effect, it's a Yawgmoth card I don't have the mana for, or the Tendrils, or a tutor.  Furthermore, I HATE Brainstorm in this deck; it makes you mulligan more because if you can't win with your hand and the top couple cards of your library you don't go off until like turn 4 if you're playing first (obviously too slow).

A week ago or so I started tooling around with the idea of pushing the deck further to black by replacing the forces, then ditching Brainstorms for 2 Tainted Pact, and Death Wish and something else (I forget what offhand).  The Pacts are a near demonic tutor in this deck (any time I fizzled with it nothing but a Draw-7 or the real demonic would have been able to save me anyway, and that was something like 15 cards deep).  It also makes Chrome Mox worth another look because it's usual function becomes "Pitch a tutor or Death Wish, cast Ritual".

RE: Workshop - That's exactly the qualm I was having with the above change.  The deck seems to run smoother with the changes I mentioned (or at least I have an easier time playing it), but I don't like the fact that I can't Unmask a Mishra's Workshop, or a Sphere of Resistance topdecked on turn 1.

[Smash]

Why isn't helm worth it anymore? Helm + impulse is millions of times better than brainstorm.

[Xhad]

Impulse with no Helm is worse than Brainstorm.  Considering how much I don't like Brainstorm, I wouldn't include a card that's a bad brainstorm without the other half of its mediocre two-card combo.

The problem with Helm is that you need to cast at least three spells that have a colorless in the casting cost before it gives a return.  This means casting it before you go crazy with draw-7s (when you don't have the mana), or after much of it's advantage is negated (in which case you're already winning or it won't help you.  From the goldfishing I've done with the deck, I just can't think of a time I would ever want a helm on the board and have two mana to cast it (especially if I'm trying to avoid stalling out due to colorscrew), other than on turn one off a mox if I plan to go off on turn 2.

[Smash]

Impulse with no Helm is worse than Brainstorm.  Considering how much I don't like Brainstorm, I wouldn't include a card that's a bad brainstorm without the other half of its mediocre two-card combo.

The problem with Helm is that you need to cast at least three spells that have a colorless in the casting cost before it gives a return.  This means casting it before you go crazy with draw-7s (when you don't have the mana), or after much of it's advantage is negated (in which case you're already winning or it won't help you.  From the goldfishing I've done with the deck, I just can't think of a time I would ever want a helm on the board and have two mana to cast it (especially if I'm trying to avoid stalling out due to colorscrew), other than on turn one off a mox if I plan to go off on turn 2.

Eh, just look back at old school academy with meditate's and helms.  Replacing the clunky candalabra and capsize with the tendril engine makes the deck much more deadly.

[Xhad]

Old school academy needed an academy in play to be good and ran stuff that could untap it.  This deck removes large chunks of its own library from the game, and has no way to untap an Academy aside from Crop Rotation -> Timetwister -> Crop Rotation (unless you draw the Academy again and have a Fastbond in play).

[Forgotten One]

Helm of Awakening served a dual purpose in Academy.dec.  Not only did it cheapen your future spells, it also upped the number of artifacts in play so that you can tap Tolarian Academy for more mana.  In essence, it pays for itself the very next spell you play in old skool Academy.  As Xhad already pointed out, Draw7.dec doesn't have any need for an artifact on the board so the payback is almost nil.

[Xhad]

I think I've just about pushed the Unmask idea to its logical extreme:

Mana:

3 City of Brass
3 Gemstone Mine
2 Glimmervoid
1 Undiscovered Paradise (mostly to smooth pacts)
1 Tarnished Citadel (completely to smooth pacts, barely playable)
1 Tolarian Academy

4 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Fastbond
4 Dark Ritual

1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mana Vault

Draw-7s/Brokenness:

3 Diminishing Returns
1 Timetwister
1 Tinker
1 Windfall
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Memory Jar
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Mind's Desire

Tutors/Protection/Utility:

1 Ancestral
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Hurkyll's Recall
3 Tainted Pact (I <3 THIS CARD)
4 Unmask
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Crop Rotation

Win Conditions (3):

2 Tendrils
1 Burning Wish

Sideboard:

4 Swarms
1 Returns
1 Tendrils
1 Infernal Contract (for when I have Burning Wish mana + Ritual but no more mana or insufficent storm count)
-some random prison hate

Some notes:

-I was right about the increased value of Chrome Mox; you'll notice there's no Sol Ring in this build.  Usually it ends up being a bad Mox Jet, but that's ok since it keeps me from getting post-draw7 hands with a ritual "stranded" because I need all my colored mana for other things.  Even if it doesn't fix your colors, it nets the same amount of mana as a Sol Ring but doesn't need one of your existing mana to do it, and the card disadvantage is nonexistent the second you cast any draw7.

-I hate Death Wish.  For the longest time the second Tendrils was a Wish, but eventually it got cut when I realized that not only did it never win me a game that Tendrils couldn't have won (in goldfishing or in actual matches), it actually lost me a game where I was forced to Bargain down to 1 and the last card I topdecked was the Wish.  This version does need to run 3 win conditions; the returns barely bother me at all, but having to stop a pact or refrain from casting Chrome/Unmask just because you're afraid of losing win conditions is not worth the benefit of having fewer "dead cards" early game.

-I want Force.  Unmask does have a few benefits over Force (namely having more "situational" cards to dump to it, the fact that you can randomly cast it to boost storm even if you're playing against a deck with no counters, and being able to figure out what your opponent is playing right away so you'll know whether to worry about possible counters or not), but there are several problems I'm running into:

-Not knowing whether to use it pre-Windfall or not
-The fact that it's suckass in the combo mirror when you're opponent is doing stuff and you can't do anything about it
-The fact that you're almost always pitching Bargain/Necro, win conditions or tutors to it.  This is more subtle but until I noticed it, I had been randomly dropping games because either I thinned my deck of too many meaningful spells and twistered into all mana, OR I got forced to returns with like 15 cards between graveyard and hand because I had like a million mana but no other business spells, the whole time weeping at my Yawgmoth's Bargain sitting in the RFG zone.  It's not like I can change this too terribly much, even if I'm trying to avoid it; what am I going to do, pitch a ritual instead?

-Tainted Pact is so awesome. It's like an instant DT in this deck.  I actually had one game where I went first dropping Mox, Mox, land and passing the turn, then my opponent went Workshop, Trinisphere...I pact with sphere on the stack, turn over something like 6 cards to find a chain, untap, drop a land, tap 3 to chain my own mox, sac a land to chain the other one (floating a mana), sac my other land to bounce his sphere, drop moxen then cast Timetwister and proceed to win the game.  The only time I've had a pact fizzle on a single-digit number of cards was when the first two cards were Ritual, Ritual, and that was just astronomical bad luck (25 cards in library, one ritual returnsed away and one in my graveyard).  I think one step I'm going to take is to try and fit another Chain in the deck so that with Pact I have basically 9 cards that can save me from hosers opening hand if I went first (counting the forces).  Probably in place of the Second Tendrils since not having Unmasks to pitch to is a big deal in that regard.

Also, while I haven't had the opportunity to try it yet, the very idea of "Pact for Force of Will in response to you wrecking my ass" gives me the giggles.

[Machinus]

While consult and returns have a negative effect on the deck by removing cards from the game, pact has the reverse effect. It was weak in standard where redundancy is necessary for efficency, but in a deck with mostly restricted cards, it can compete with tutors like DT. The same reasoning that makes consult scary in a deck like this is what makes pact promising. I think it is a good idea and worth considering, and certainly seems to be superior to death wish.

Duress is better than unmask. With FoW and Chrome Mox already sucking up an extra five cards, Unmask really can't fit in here. Eight slots for hand disruption could also be too much. If you were thinking about using it to snag that sphere or root maze, what are you going to do game two? Force is the only way to really stop it.

[Xhad]

If I haven't yet cast my first draw7, no way would I want to spend a mana on Duress (against random deck whose decktype I don't know yet; against control I've presumably sided in Xantid Swarms so I can try to go off using one of them...).  After I've cast my first draw7, the card advantage has kicked in and I'll almost always have fuel for Unmask.

That said, Force and Unmask are pretty much mutually exclusive.  I don't think of Unmask as being comparable to Duress, it's pretty much a Force of Will for black decks without enough blue cards to support the real Force of Will.

Similarly Pact isn't a replacement for Death Wish; in fact since it can remove your win conditions it can make Wish/Tendrils 2 necessary if you run too many Pacts!  It's really competing for a slot with Brainstorm; unless you're absolutely desperate for a specific card, it's usually an Impulse on steroids (even if you can get almost anything you want, you don't always want to remove 10-15 cards from the game unless you have a good reason).  But you can't really replace them straight across because:

-The "I removed all my win conditions" problem
-The "I don't have enough blue cards for Force of Will" problem
-The "I flipped over Tainted Pacts with my Tainted Pact" problem
-The higher casting cost

More and more I'm convinced two Pact is the right number.

EDIT: Some clarification

[Tomasio!]

I've been testing this deck for about an hour, and it works really well.
First I had doubts about the returns, because of the chance to remove the kill. While testing the deck, I remove plenty of cards, and alway's one of the kill cards were in the deck.
So, I'm very pleased about that.

LED works to good in this deck. Don't take it out.
The only thing that occured to me is that maybe 2 "returns" are enough, instead of three. But,  I haven't tested this yet.


If it's alright with you, I'll experiment a little bit more with this deck.

Because it's so cruel.