False Beacon: as scrubby as it gets

[Abhorsen105]

When looking through spoilers of new sets, I’m always attracted to big casting costs. I was looking through the beacons when I saw Beacon of Immortality, a two card combo with False Cure. The first thing that came to mind was a quick combo deck.


    Mana (34)
    3 Swamp
    3 Tundra
    4 Scrubland
    4 Polluted Delta
    3 Underground Sea
    1 Mox Diamond
    5 Solomox (only on color mox)
    4 Dark Ritual
    1 Mana Vault
    4 Cabal Ritual
    2 Gilded Lotus
   
    Draw/Tutor (12)
    1 Ancestral Recall
    1 Mystical Tutor
    1 Demonic Tutor
    4 Brainstorm
    4 Night's Whisper
    1 Vampiric Tutor  
   
    Disruption/Broken (7)
    1 Yawgmoth's Will
    1 Necropotence
    1 Time Walk
    4 Duress
   
    Combo (8)
    4 Beacon of Immortality
    4 False Cure

Maybe it was the 34 mana sources (a few too many) or just the inconsistency, but there were many better combo decks to play.

After that I tried a control approach. It’s able to play defensively, drain a big spell, and then combo off.

Mana (29)
4 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Bayou
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Solo Mox (sapphire jet only)
2 Gilded Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Quirion Ranger

Draw/Tutor (13)
4 Brainstorm
4 Night’s Whisper
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
2 Cunning Wish
 
Disruption (10)
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
2 Duress

Combo (6)
3 Beacon of Immortality
3 False Cure

Broken (3)
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth’s Bargain

Sideboard (15)
1 False Cure
1 Beacon of Destiny
1 Oxidize
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Disenchant
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Fact or Fiction
3 Deep Analysis
3 Stifle
2 Blue Elemental Blast

Looking at the deck, it looks terrible. It has a shaky 4 color manabase with 1 of duals, and a crazy mana curve. Finally, the combo costs 8 mana to pull off. But in testing, the deck has been doing incredibly. To attempt to justify this, I’ll go over some of the choices.

Birds of Paradise and Quirion Ranger: Originally I threw in the birds because I just got 4, but in testing they helped the mana base a ton. Quirion Rangers help if I’m land light, and make great chump blockers, but I’m thinking of cutting them.

29 sources and 1 of’s of duals: I’ve been tinkering with the manabase a lot, and this is what I’ve come up with. The change I might make is to up the fetch count to 5 or 6 if I had the extra fetches. I’ve never once been mana flooded, I always think I have way too much and end up with exactly the amount I need.

Gilded Lotus: Has been incredible. Once it gets out I don’t need to worry about my mana base anymore.

3 of’s for the combo pieces: I don’t end up wishing for the extra sideboard copy much, but it’s nice to have as backup.

The sideboard was thrown together, I don’t use cunning wish all that much, which makes me wonder about cutting it. Another thing I am considering is a transformational sideboard into full control.

As for my metagame, there has recently been a lot of control. GAT, Hulk, mono blue/blue red scepter control variants. There are a few FCG players, hence the BEBs.  

Any advice would be welcome

[Addolorisi]

1. Unless I misread your post, you discarded any thought of playing the first decklist. Why then post it here? (I'm also a fan of using the quote function for decklists, as it looks much neater.)
2. People have gotten pretty good at killing little Fishies and Welders, so how exactly can you justify relying on BoP for mana fixing?
3. Could you post some matchup analysises so we can get a better idea of where you're coming from?

Sorry if I seem a bit harsh, but you could have put a lot more content into your post, especially if you've been playtesting well.

[Dr. Sylvan]

Moved to Newbie.

[AngryPheldagrif]

Your second list is interesting, but you might want to reconsider your use of [card]Beacon of Destiny[/card]

-Dan

[Jacob Orlove]

Moved to Newbie.

This is fundamentally a casual deck, because he's more concerned with making beacon/cure work than with actually winning. Moved again.

[TrixR4Kidz]

It does look cute, but it obviously can't be better then any of the current top combo decks, so yea for a casual deck it does look fun though, I must say it is creative.



I KNEW THERE WAS A WAY TO BREAK FALSE CURE!!!

[Outlaw]

Deck looks decent for a casual, as Trix said it cant stand up to leading combo decks right now (Belcher and Draw7)

[Abhorsen105]

maybe I've just been playing against bad belcher players, (it was online) but with the control list I've only lost a few games to belcher, and won a lot more. I still haven't been able to test against draw 7