Doomsday - Take 2

[Dante]

since threads like that typically end up deleted or something, I saved the relevant parts in a text file so I could dissect it later....but there was a crash during some cleaning (per mods).  

I've got most of Thorme's original post, plus some JP/Hi-val responses before the thread degenerated into "I know your secret/no you don't".

David's Original post[/u]

So that I can get you to read on: let me dispel your misgivings about a Paragon member posting a Doomsday deck. This is a serious discussion about a serious deck.

I wasn't able to make the Star City Games P9.2 tourney due to attending an out-of-town wedding, but I'm fairly sure I would have run Doomsday there if I could have made it. This deck is the real thing folks, and I ran it fairly heavily through the Short Bus deck gauntlet, and I became quite confident in the deck.


Maindeck:

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Leak
4 Duress
4 Xantid Swarm

4 Doomsday
1 Mind's Desire
1 Beacon of Destruction

1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Lim Dul's Vault
4 Brainstorm

4 Dark Ritual
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Diamond
1 Chrome Mox

4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
4 Underground Sea
2 Swamp
3 Island


Sideboard:

4 Hurkyl's Recall
4 Ground Seal
4 Cranial Extraction
1 Anurid Scavenger
1 Fire/Ice
1 Serum Visions


History

I'll start with a brief history on the deck. I had immediately begun testing a Doomsday deck upon hearing of the unrestriction. My list was based on killing with Anurid Scavenger and Time Walk. My Doomsday would be for:

Ancestral Recall
Black Lotus
Anurid Scavenger
Time Walk
Fire/Ice

You would Ancestral into Lotus, Scavenger, Walk and cast them. Next upkeep (Time Walk turn) put Time Walk on bottom, draw Fire/Ice, use Ice to tap something drawing Walk, and start infinite Walking while swinging with Scavenger. This version ran only a single card which could be "dead" - the Scavenger himself. This was the primary advantage over versions I saw trying to kill with Disciple/Helm/Bauble. (Note that I also included 1 maindeck Serum Visions for when you didn't need the tapping effect of Ice, and needed to spend 1 less mana).

While testing, I learned of Meandeck's idea for a kill mechanism: Mind's Desire + Beacon of Destruction. I simply swapped the Scavenger, Fire/Ice for Desire + Beacon and started doing some test runs. This version performed better in most matchups - although it ran worse against Workshop-based decks like 5/3, Man Show, and Stax. With such small changes, I built the board for the transformational kill mechanism against those decks (Scavenger/Time Walk views 3Sphere as a minor inconvenience, but it stops Beacon cold)


Playing the Deck

With this version of the deck, every Doomsday will be very similar. Given none of the pertinent cards in hand, you will Doomsday for:

Ancestral Recall
Black Lotus
Dark Ritual
Mind's Desire
Beacon of Destruction

This requires that you have UB available to go off. Tap U for Ancestral, getting Lotus, Ritual, Desire (Storm count = 1). Play Lotus (Storm count = 2). Tap B for Dark Ritual (Storm count = 3). Sac Lotus for UUU, using this and BBB from ritual, play Mind's Desire (3 copies made). You now have 4 copies of Mind's Desire on the stack, with a library consisting of a single card - Beacon of Destruction. Resolve the first copy of Desire. This reveals Beacon, and you may play it until end of turn w/o paying the cost. Play the Beacon (while the other 3 Desire copies are still on the stack). Beacon does 5 damage to opponent, and then as part of its resolution, it shuffles itself back into the library (where it will be the only card). Then, move on to the second Mind's Desire and repeat.

If you already have a Ritual in hand when you Doomsday, you can always grab a Duress or something to fight counters and up the storm count by 1. If you have Beacon in hand, you'll need to brainstorm it back, or get creative post-Doomsday using the Lotus for red mana.


Sideboard

Of course, sideboarding will depend on your expected metagame. I use the tranformational sideboard for Workshop matchups where you can bring in the Scavenger, Fire/Ice, Serum Visions, and Hurkyls. This lets you virtually ignore 3Sphere. (also, you won't be plagued with having Beacon in hand with this configuration)

Cranial Extraction is there since the deck runs 4 Rituals. This provides a relatively easy turn 1 pseudo-win against Belcher, Tog, Oath, and opposing Doomsday.

Testing the Ground Seals until anyone suggests something better.


Advantages over other Combo

- Basic Lands
- Disruption (look at all the disruption - awesome)
- Fun factor of killing with Doomsday



Feel free to try the deck out - you're guaranteed to enjoy it. Let me know what you think.


JP and doug's responses[/u]

Kind of similar. Off the top of my head, it was something like this:

-4 Mana Leak
-4 Xantid Swarm
+4 Unmask
+4 Lim-Dul's Vault
-2 something random
+1 Necropotence
+1 Yawgmoth's Will

Doomsdaying on turn 2 and passing the turn to them lets them get 1+ cards and allows the opponent to untap and use everything in their deck to stop you, whereas you only have your hand. The Xantids were a pain in the ass for me and I just found that TPS could eke out better wins, which isn't saying much. There's room to improve it no doubt, but playing against 4cc or something and letting them get Drain active or whatever is so bad.

Specific sideboard cards are like BEB, Stifle, REB, Arcane Lab, Trinisphere, etc in addition to stuff like Mana Leak, Drain, FOW. Basically after you doomsday you want to make pretty damn sure that you've got the game in the bag.[/u]

[Windfall]

I like the idea of this deck.  Doomsday's effect is very powerful.

After throwing this list together and running it for a few hands, it seems that the weakest cards are Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond.  They both require cards to work, and this deck runs very little actual draw.  In a deck like MeanDeath, the draw sevens and such negate the huge impact of Chrome Mox.  This list really doesn't enjoy pitching spells.  Also, the presence of Dark Ritual allows us to cut these two accelerants.  Ritual is truly broken here.  Cutting Chrome and Diamond would allow the use of two more tutors or draw spells.  It seems Necropotence should be in here.  It would just win most of the time, since you can get Duress instead of Ancestral as the first Doomsday card and ensure victory.

Xantid Swarm is too good to ignore.  I would play 4 maindeck.  He helps address the problem of "if Ancestral is countered, I lose."

Another thing I notice is that getting to BBB is quite key, and you may need to fetch Basic Swamps to do it.  Thus, perhaps Bloodstained Mires are better than Flooded Strands.

I'm going to keep working on this; I think it's hot.

     ~Mark B.

[Smmenen]

We have a heavily tuned version of the deck that I'll post and discuss here as soon as JPs article goes up.

There are basically two ways you can go with the combo: you can take it Draw7 route or the TPS route.

Once you got the TPS, slow control-combo route, it leads inevitabily to an optimal build.  

However, the combo itself is vulnerable to every single hate card in Type One; Null Rod, Sphere of Resistence, Chalice of hte Void, Wasteland, Root Maze, Force of Will, Mana Drain, Trinisphere, Misdirection, AND EVEN STIFLE!!

There is a solution though - minimizing the possible risks.  However, they can only be minimized so much.

Nonetheless, I beleive that our build of the deck is sufficiently strong to get Doomsday back on the list, in an objective sense.  

The problem is that Doosmday is harder to play than MeanDeath - MUCH Harder.  The amount of time it takes to figure out the myriad and amazing ways you can kill people is mind boggling (more than just Beacon) in the same deck and the ways in which you win in the most impossible of situations is equally stunning.  But top walk through them all takes far more time than is allowed in a tournament.

[walkingdude]

I don’t have much recent experience with doomsday. That said in the early and mid days of long before people found diminishing returns I used doomsday in that slot so I do have a lot of experience playing decks with doomsday.

I need to try out the posted list, but I’d be more inclined to take the deck in a storm direction. Getting lethal storm counts with a doomsday is absurdly easy when you have will and repayable artifact mana.

The kill listed requires UB to start which strikes me as very demanding. Is there a way to streamline this without requiring more cards? The storm kill I know most well requires you to have a chrome sphere on the table and then it only requires 1 colorless. Anyone know any better ways?

[thorme]

After throwing this list together and running it for a few hands, it seems that the weakest cards are Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond.  

Xantid Swarm is too good to ignore.  I would play 4 maindeck.

Yeah, I still continue to go back and forth on the Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond.  They are in there as an attempt to make the deck able to go off faster, or be able to cast Duress/Mana Leak while still having the mana available to go off.  I can definitely see these as potential changes.

I agree about the Swarms!  There is no feeling better (in an MTG context) than attacking with Swarm with a combo deck and then being able to go about your business.

the combo itself is vulnerable to every single hate card in Type One; Null Rod, Sphere of Resistence, Chalice of hte Void, Wasteland, Root Maze, Force of Will, Mana Drain, Trinisphere, Misdirection, AND EVEN STIFLE!!
...
The problem is that Doosmday is harder to play than MeanDeath - MUCH Harder.

The combo is certainly vulnerable.  That is one of the reasons for the transformational kill in the side.  Scavenger can easily win past Null Rod, Sphere of Resistance, Root Maze, 3Sphere, and Stifle.  

Actually, I like how immune the deck is to Wasteland.  6 fetches and 5 basics make it mostly a non-issue.  FOW and Mana Drain are threats every deck must take into consideration...and the 4 maindeck swarms go a LONG way towards mitigating this risk.


You are dead-on about how difficult the deck is to play.  The way I explain it (when I'm having to take so much time during a Doomsday) is that you have to play out the entire rest of the game in your head - including all their possible answers and all your potential plays.  This can make the act of Doomsdaying take some time.

I need to try out the posted list, but I’d be more inclined to take the deck in a storm direction. Getting lethal storm counts with a doomsday is absurdly easy when you have will and repayable artifact mana.

The kill listed requires UB to start which strikes me as very demanding.

Not sure what you're referring to by taking a storm direction.  The kill requires a storm count by using Mind's Desire.  Post-Doomsday, you have no graveyard, so I'm curious to see your kill.

UB has never been a problem for me.  If you've cast Doomsday, you have B available, and U is the deck's primary color.

[walkingdude]

I had doomsday in long so the cards I’d use were cards that were incidentally in that deck. When I had a chromatic sphere on the table and a ritual I’d wish for doomsday and stack.

Ancestral
Led
Lotus
Will
Wish

Then with 1 colorless break the sphere for blue drawing ancestral.
Cast it  Storm 2 (the doomsday was 1)
And draw led lotus will
Play led and lotus Storm 4
Sac lotus to play will Storm 5
Sac Led in response for bbb
Replay led and Lotus Storm 7 bbb
Sac both bbb rrr bbb
Replay sphere Storm 8 bbb rrr bb
Break sphere drawing burning wish bbb rrr bu
Wish for tendrils Storm 9 bbb r bu
Tendrils for kill Storm 10 u

Of course in long there were 2 wishes and you used the first wish to get will and then continued form there, but these days will would be maindeck anyway so I updated the stacking some. If you fit the doomsdays into something like deathlong that has wills and chromatic spheres anyone it would be another 4 cards that said win right now.

[Smmenen]

Our article on this deck goes up next week.

I'll explain in great detail how to hate out this deck and how it works from our build things that weren't mentioned in the article.

[Dante]

Our article on this deck goes up next week.

I'll explain in great detail how to hate out this deck and how it works from our build things that weren't mentioned in the article.

When's this so-called article going up?  I think this was just a ploy to distract people from testing Doomsday decks so you can catch everyone unprepared again...  

[JACO]

Our article on this deck goes up next week.

I'll explain in great detail how to hate out this deck and how it works from our build things that weren't mentioned in the article.

When's this so-called article going up?  I think this was just a ploy to distract people from testing Doomsday decks so you can catch everyone unprepared again

Actually I think it really is. MeanDeck has posted a bunch of other articles and issues (CruciSlaver, Debate About Fish, Debate About Crucible, etc.), but really skirted the issue of Doomsday. It's basically been a big dis-information campaign to draw interest to other things. I'd wager a great deal you'll see their tuned version at SCG Chicago this weekend, and possibly Short Bus' as well.

[Smmenen]

Speak and ye shall recieve.  See the open forum.

[jpmeyer]

To be fair, I sent that article in earlier, but between a backlog of T1 articles (SCG doesn't want to put up more than one per day) and the fact that Knut was at PT Columbus meant that it couldn't go up until now.

[walkingdude]

Sweet! the kill stack I suggested in this thread was the same one meandeck found that pushed the deck to the next level. Of course, its not like they got it from my posts in this thread since they’d had it for weeks before this thread even went up. Still, its always good to know you are thinking along the right lines.