English Breakfast - Are We Still Tasting the Rainbow?

[jshields]

I know that the Illusionary Mask version of Survival Combo style decks is all the rage, but I thought I would try my hands on something that has not seemed to be touched much here since many think the design is better left for type 1.5 .  However, this deck seems extremely good so far in my metagame in testing, but my mail worries are beating the metagame long-term, which consists of mostly keeper, dragon, gay-r fish, and trinistax decks with many decks using main deck Blood Moon or Null Rods.  I like this idea since nobody is expecting it as I was the last person to run it to any decent use, but then again, I have been playing almost solely landstill recently.  I also know that I should also run power in my deck, but with the power that I own or am getting (library of alexandria, mox pearl, mox jet), the colors do not fit in the main design.  Nonetheless, what I am trying to ask for is a FEB primer that is up to date and if anyone else done really well with English Breakfast recently?


Meta-based English Breakfast

Mana~~~~~~~~~
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Windswept Heath
4 Tropical Island
3 Bayou
3 Taiga
1 Forest
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Diamond

4 Birds of Paradise
3 Wall of Roots
2 Elvish Spirit Guide

Creatures I use to actually win with~~~~~~~~
4 Volrath's Shapeshifter
2 Phage the Untouchable
1 Psychatog
1 Morphling
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Platinum Angel
1 Hypnox
1 Reya, Dawnbringer
1 Cephalid Inkshrouder
1 Genesis
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath

Utilities~~~~~~~~~~~~
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Unearth
2 Lim-Dul's Vault
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Living Wish


~~~~~~~~~Sideboard~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 Xantid Swarm - I probably should run multiples of this main deck
1 Dwarven Blastminer
1 Hammer Mage
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Ascendent Evincar
1 Plague Spitter
1 Anurid Brushhopper
1 Elf Replica
1 Waterfront Bouncer
1 Gigapede
1 Blurred Mongoose
1 True Believer
1 Rootwater Thief
1 Symbiotic Wurm
1 Phyrexian Dreadnought

[Razvan]

Hey, what a coincidence. I was working on a FEB version too.

You have Red, and yet no Anger. Why is that?

I know Akroma has haste, but it might be better if you did include Anger instead?

[dmessiah]

I really think it sucks.  It was my baby, my favorite deck, and I finished second to last at the Gamemaster tourney.  Roughly, I might miss a few cards, here it is:

3 Volrath's Shifter
2 Phage
4 Survival
4 Duress
1 Demonic T
1 Vamp T
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Squee
3 Unearth
4 Birds of P
2 Elvish SG
1 Irridescent Angel
1 Phyrexian Dreadnought
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Akroma
1 Hypnox
1 Palinchron
2 Xantid Swarm
4 brainstorm
1 viridian zealot
Mox Em, Saph, Jet
Lotus
4 tropical
4 windswept heath
2 city of brass
1 polluted delta
1 forest
4 bayou

sb:
1 psychatog
3 xantid swarm
3 ground seal
3 tormod's crypt
1 reiver demon
1 viridian zealot
2 uktabi orangutan
1 viridian shaman

     It rolled over to wasteland, trinisphere, blood moon, chalice, trikeskillion (byebye birds), nether void, withered wretch, meddling mage...  need I go on?  Play it against a goldfish, keep it at home if they play any disruption.

[mtg_player_2004]

This is my old FEB decklist.  I only ever made it on apprentice but it may be useful to you.

Engine:
4 [card]Survival of the Fittest
3 Volrath's Shapeshifter

Creatures:
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Phage the Untouchable
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Hypnox
1 Iridescent Angel
1 Xantid Swarm
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob

Utility:
4 Duress
2 Diabolical Edict
1 Mind Twist
1 Living Wish
1 Regrowth
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

Lands:
4 Polluted Delta
4 Windswept Heath
4 Tropical Island
4 Bayou
3 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

Artifacts:
7 Sol Ring/Lotus/Mox

[TheHuff]

The main problem with playing FEB these days is that it looses to many of the same cards that Dragon.dec does.  Graveyard hate hate is running rampant and FEB has no way to deal with this.  If you can come up with a way to deal with it then it is pretty solid, but till then its only good for "fish bowling"

[FireFall26]

Ninja mask is just better than the deck in every way

[Kowal]

Damn right.  Represent.

Regardless, if you're set on it, I have some advice.  The Dawg would bring it to you, but he's in Poland.

Lose the maindeck utility creatures.  In game one, your game plan is kill your opponent.  Not answer their threats, not empty their hand, just friggen kill em.  Yes, Hypnox/shifter is cute.  But it's an unnecessary resouce drain that could be killing your opponent instead.

Running red is bad.  Really bad.  There are only three colors you should be running, and they could be glaringly obvious.  Also, lose the Diamond, and possibly the chrome.  In a perfect world you'd be replacing these with Emerald and Lotus, but if that's not possible, run more Elvish Spirit Guides.  Cut some land for Quirion Rangers too, they make you not just lose to Wasteland.

Also, you're running on zero disruption and little search.  After eliminating the crappy utility guys (leaving mana dorks, 4 shifters, 2 phage, and akroma, a tog, and a cephalid inkshrouder perhaps) you should have lots of space for Brainstorm, Duress, and Cabal Therapy.  You should find room for four of each, you'll find they're wonderful.  If you pick up an Ancestral, replace a brainstorm with it.

Living Wish is your call.  It's nice how they remove themselves from the game after you cast them, but the additional utility should never be an issue.  Good luck.

[Lord of Water]

I don't see why anybody plays FEB at all any more - can anyone point out to me how this deck is beter than Ninja Mask/Vengeur Masque?

[Matt]

Well, it's cheaper.

[TheHuff]

Well, it's cheaper.

Yes its cheaper, but its incredibly inconsistent, and many times it will just stall out on you.  Ninja mask is the way to go.

[Vegeta2711]

Yes its cheaper, but its incredibly inconsistent, and many times it will just stall out on you. Ninja mask is the way to go.

You know Matt was just pointing out one anwser, just 'cause right?  

[inscrutable]

If you are running Living (which I flirted with doing in my SurvivalMask build) wish you should at least stick a Strip mine in the sideboard to fetch to get rid of LOA, Maze of Ith, Workshops, Baazars, etc.



Inscrutable.

[jshields]

well, I tried my design out at the local t1 and it did fine so far except for a badly played game on both my part and the opponent's oart with grow (sorry, michael!).  I think that my deck probably is a bit creature heavy and will see where to put in brainstorms.  however, unlike the flamewars this started, I really was curious to see whatever happened to this deck and just felt that the $400 that I could spend on a playset of Illusionary Masks was better spent on buying a Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, and Library of Alexandria.   This really is just a matter of budget, but then again I am a huge fan of playing decks that can run all 5 colors and consistantly win against a rather well balanced metagame

[Hi-Val]

It seems that by removing the Mask combo, you free up 8 spaces in the deck. When I played Vengeur, the deck rolled to Keeper-style control. I think that these slots are best spent with Force of Will and maybe Mana Drain. I found that when I ran white, Meddling Mages were dynamite. You can Survival them up against control and just name everything that wrecks them.

Cutting away the Mask combo leaves you room to build a consistent, solid deck. Make use of the 8 slots and don't mess around is my suggestion!

[Eddie]

Let me wander for a moment. The biggest problem this deck has (in my humble opinion at least)  is that an opponent will put something in your graveyard with volrath out. Could it be that a simple card as Scrabbling Claws could help out?

Ok you can stop laughing now.  

Scrabbling Claws
Text (MR): : Target player removes a card in his or her graveyard from the game. ; ,Sacrifice ~this~: Remove target card in a graveyard from the game. Draw a card.

Of course you can only do this in the next combat step. So if your opponent destroys something in the blockers step, you can only remove the card when damage is on the stack, which isn't much help. It might help out in some very specific cases, but is too narrow in general.

What would work best is a planar void that can be activated at instant speed. Something like:

Instant Void 1B Enchantment
1B: Until end of turn, whenever a card is put into a graveyard, remove that card from the game.

This would be way to strong as it works as a one way planar void. Any other thoughts on this?

[TJ-Whoopy]

wouldn't withered wretch serve the same function?

[DEA]

wretch does indeed do the job
i've attacked, had a land wasted, ate it, ate my way to a dreadnought, and ate somemore until i reached a phage
opponent didn't even see it coming because the wretch was facedown

[jshields]

I have tested the deck I posted and tried at the mask version, but every time I have tested these so far, the results have only been mediocre.  It is a nice deck that I may make my pet deck for a while, while I use my already much more efficient U/R landstill deck (thanks for the primer, shockwave!) and the occaisonal keeper taken from the clinger primer that works equally mediocre-illy (is this even a word)

[The Hamburgler]

Well, as said in an earlier post, the dck loses to similar things as Dragon. Dragon handles the hate with Force of Will (in the U/G/B build) and Stifle. I suggest obviously Stifle, it has such amazing disruption and utility.

[gzeiger]

Of course you can only do [Scrabbling Claws] the next combat step. So if your opponent destroys something in the blockers step, you can only remove the card when damage is on the stack, which isn't much help. It might help out in some very specific cases, but is too narrow in general.

This post reveals a very deep misunderstanding of basic game rules If your opponent does something, you will ALWAYS get priority at least one more time in the same turn step. If they put a land into your graveyard during the declare blockers step, you have a chance to remove it before damage is assigned.

Another card that has use as both Dragon hate and protection against same is Ground Seal. For decks that don't destroy permanents but may use graveyard hate other than Tormod's Crypt this will protect Phage and Dreadnoughts as well as making Dragon go search for removal. It also doesn't disrupt the Scrabbling Claws...

Both of these suggestions have some merit, I think, but I have a hard time seeing how they could realistically be implemented without significantly diluting the deck.

[Eddie]

Yes, bad one on my part. I don't even remember why I was thinking that. I shouldn't post when I'm half asleep I guess...

Anyway, the wretch is indeed far more interesting, and psychatog helps out too.