Hell, Carpet will single-handedly let you beat out B2B+Flux+Chalice for 1 or whatever you think your worst scenario might be.
Carpet costs 1
Taking from what's implied...
In post-SB'ing games, if you go first you get Carpet, and beat out the hate. If you go 2nd, hopefully you have Force or obviously Carpet is done. Playing a combo deck going 2nd against all the field's hate is not an easy task, it should be mentioned. The way I think of it, if I'm afraid they're gonna use Chalice and they're going first, I oftentimes won't SB in Carpet. It depends on their deck and the situation, but generally most decks have a way to get 2 mana first turn for Chalice at 1 so playing Carpet will backfire as you implied. I will however still use Carpet if I feel they won't be able to get Chalice for 1 first turn, or that the odds of them actually even getting Chalice in the first place are high enough that I even need to worry.
To all: That is a prime example of why it's important not just to know what SB cards are good in what matches, but to also know why and where exactly all those cards are going and depending on whether or not you're going first.
This reinforces when I explained under "Reasons not to play this deck" that if you aren't intimately familiar with how to properly SB, then it will show up in your performance. This is just being a better player in general, and good articles have been written on how to SB and prepare ahead of time for the expected metagame.
I've tried both the dual/fetch mana base and 4 Gemstone, 4 COB, 3 Glimmervoid mana base and I enjoyed the later because you can run Wheel of Fortune main and Xantid Swam and Naturize and Oxidize in the sideboard for the bad MWS matchup.
Also with the 4 gemstone, 4 COB and 3 Glimmervoid somehow could always play around Bloodmoon and B2B, I don't know how but I have the playtesting to back up my theory.
Practice going second against a person trying to cast 3sphere or Chalice for 1 on the first turn and see how it goes, I think you'll be severly disapointed
I'm sorry you feel that 5c land are better than the configuration I'm proposing. Did you disagree with my reasonings for running the fetchlands?.
I want to go into depth a little bit on the Wheel of Fortune bit. Let me explain why you don't want to run Wheel of Fortune:
Combo naturally falls behind control in the "official" metagame clock, however this deck was originally made with the intention that it will be the best possible combo deck to play against a counterspell wall (the only thing stopping combo from dominating at the time), and thereby lead to the best deck in T1. It's good against control because you only need to resolve one spell to win and on top of that it gives you the best spell in the game. If that weren't enough, you automatically start off with 4 disruption cards inside the combo!
The natural anti-control package at the time (and still today) was 4 Duress, 4 Force of Will. What you end up with is a deck that likes to deny it's opponent's cards, and when both players have only one card left they end up in a showdown, only your card is Bargain which will overpower any card they might possibly have. That's the theory.
On a side note, that is why Future Sight is used in this deck - once you enter the mid-game and you've exhausted all their spells, you play Future Sight and, going back to the theory, your threat trumps their threat. It's sort of like my 6th Rector, but it doesn't need Therapy.
Draw-7's give your opponent more cards, which is exactly the opposite strategy the deck is trying to accomplish. Don't mislabel Wheel's absence as simply because it's red, but because it is anti-synergistic.
Today, we only have 4 Therapy. That means we have 4 less cards that make running Wheel bad, but you have to understand that 90% of the deck is basically the same, so it still functions poorly trying to cast draw-7's. It's one of the reasons I'm happy to be playing Trix and not Rector Tendrils, which tries to latch draw-7's onto the Rector engine.
Before I move on, I want to clarify why I use Timetwister. The primary reason for it's use is in the situations where your opening hand contains Mystical (or possibly Vamp) and a lot of mana, but not much else aside from maybe Force and another blue card. You could Mystical for Ancestral, but that's just an ok opening whereas Timetwister will give you twice as many cards. In that situation you're not using discard because you don't have it in your hand, but instead you're using the "oh shiznat, I just drew 7 cards with 4 mana floating and now get to take my turn" strategy that - while effective - is very specific to that opening hand. You don't need Wheel because you're never gonna Mystical twice. That's why there's no Tinker/Jar or Windfall either, and in fact I use Tinker SB not for Jar, but for Colossus (against decks like Fish).
This also leads to whether you should or should not use Mystical Tutor, but that is a totally separate issue.
Subpoint #2: You can't afford to Mystical for Balance in that situation. You'd suffer from a lack of what magic players call "gas" meaning you just sit there doing nothing. That's why Balance was cut.
I will say however that Timetwister is better than Wheel because of it's recursion. You can use it to cure yourself of situations where you lost Will, the only other recursion card in the deck, or you can use it offensively. Timetwistering away Welder targets will hamper your opponent's tempo, you can Timetwister away Wastes from Crucible, you can neuter the otherwise devastating Intuition for 3 Coffin Purge, and a host of other things.
Going back to the other point you made, I don't understand why a deck running the full compliment of 5c lands can run all those green SB cards but this one can't. Carpet of Flowers is green, no? The reason I don't run Xantids isn't a color issue (similar to Wheel), it's the fact that I don't need Xantids to beat a counterwall, nor do I want Oxidize/Naturalize or any other green card except Carpet in the SB. To be honest, I would use Duress in the SB before using Xantid Swarm.
Moving on, regarding the issue of 5c lands vs. my mana base vs. Blood Moon and B2B, they all do the same thing. Tell me how City of Brass and Gemstone Mine do any better than Fetchlands and duals. If I were afraid of Blood Moon, I would adjust the deck to add BEB's to the SB and a basic Island which is more than a 5c mana base can do. I don't see how you think 5c mana bases can play around those two cards any more effective than the options available here. If you were running the 5c mana base and thusly Wheel I guess you could say the deck would hardcast Wheel, but that's also very insignificant and if anything the fact I can't use B mana (Dark Ritual mana) to cast Wheel also means it will color screw me every once in a while, so the trade-off in consistency there isn't something I'd consider to be worth noting.
Lastly, I don't think I need to practice more against first turn Trinisphere/Chalice when going 2nd, nor will I be severely disappointed in how the deck performs. I'm quite familiar with how the deck plays out in those types of situations, and the ways to beat those situations.
After reading these forums, I stuck your list into MWS and ran a few goldfishes. I find it just as explosive as past builds, but sturdier; I definitely agree with no Duress, e.g.
But Future Sight still doesn't make sense to me. I have used Academy Rector to get it a couple of times, and generally all it does is dig 2 or 3 cards deeper after a big Yawgmoth's Bargain activation; Dream Halls would do the same thing. You said that you hardcast it 90% of the time, but I have never been able to get 2UUU (albeit in limited testing) unless I could also combo out with Illusions of Grandeur, meaning when I already had Necropotence or Bargain in play. In other words:
Thank you.
I think the best course of action is to use Future Sight in real play. It is admittedly bad in goldfishing, but like I described before it is a bomb similar in vein to a 6th Rector (4 Rector, Necro, Sight).
My best piece of advice is that if you have a tutor and Future Sight, tutor for Black Lotus. One example is that you can go first turn Sea, EOT Vamp for Lotus, untap and play a 2nd land and Sight. It's not too hard to win from there. I've seen many players however who would Vamp for Ancestral Recall in that situation, then they wonder why Future Sight is in the deck since they can never cast it.
Another tactic is that you don't want to Fetch Scrublands that much. I almost always go for Seas first, and use the Tundra to cast Rectors. That way you have the maximum amount of U mana possible, which not only means you can hardcast Future Sight but you also have the U mana necessary to fuel the Trix combo post-Bargain. Nothing sucks more than running out of blue mid-sequence and having a Scrubland on the board that couldn't been a U-dual.
If that does not help you, then try putting Future Sight in sample opening hands. I do this myself, and it's very informative. Because your games are essentially decided by your opening hand, if I don't like a card in my opening hand I'll be less likely to play it. If you do what I just described, you'll actually find that Future Sight fuels a lot of Force too. While that's not a primary purpose, ALL of the combo pieces are that way so you can efficiently maximize every slot in the deck to getting Bargain out.
Usually I relegate Sight to the 3rd turn kind of play after I've Therapied, maybe Ancestral'd, Forced back and forth, etc. Since you have 3 U land up by that point and maybe a Sol Ring or some Moxen and your opponent is probably low on cards, that's when I see Future Sight doing things that Balance couldn't do. Perhaps we just have different expectations from the card?
Could you please describe an example of game you lost that you would have won had you been able to Mystical Tutor for Future Sight? It seems like you would only do this if you had 2UUU but not 4BB, which is to say, rarely. I suppose if your Bargain got destroyed... but who gives their opponent a turn once Bargain hits? Even if you tap out to hardcast, you still just Bargain for 19, use artifacts to make an Illusions, Bargain for 20 more, and win. I'm baffled by how attached you are to this inclusion.
I'm not sure about the whole Mysticaling for Future Sight bit, but I'll do my best to explain.
I've explained several times my case for Future Sight so far. One of the biggest complaints against this deck is that it's "inconsistent" due to a lack of cards that do something and a large number of cards that you cast and then sit there doing nothing.
They're action cards. They're the cards you cheer to topdeck. Cards like Tinker, Will, Ancestral, or whatever else makes you think "yea, I just won". Future Sight is one card, among others, that attempt to remedy that problem of having enough action cards.
Ok, now here's a scenario I would not have won had it not been for Future Sight:
I'm playing against Fish. He has Null Rod out leaving me with 3 useless Moxen, some pressure, and he Wasted all of my land except for a neat little Scrubland that doesn't help me Brainstorm. I have Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Demonic Tutor, and Future Sight in hand.
Maybe Ritual, Ritual, Tutor, Necro? Yea right. Your life will go down the tubes.
Instead, the better play would be to Tutor up Academy, play that then cast Future Sight in your hand. Now you get Academy to beat Null Rod, and you get to lose no life to their Fishies! On top of that, they already used a Waste or two by this point so you probably are gonna have your Academy stick around for a while. Oh yea, don't forget that the more you use Future Sight, the more mana your Academy produces, and all your combo pieces are easily
I think the one point I'd like to make is that I tutor for mana, and I do it a lot. It's not that I don't run enough mana, it's that the cards I tutor for are ridiculous (Lotus, Academy). That may or may not help with your overall game, and not just with Future Sight.
Another example: I went first turn Necro, and in my 2nd hand I get Rector/Therapy. I untap and I'm at probably 14 or so. I would not Rector for Illusions, I would Rector for Future Sight and then you get to achieve the awesome synergy that is Sight/Necro. You sit with the top card and keep playing things with Sight until you can't, and then you spend 1 life to Necro away the top card and keep going with Sight.
Now let's say we're playing against an aggro deck and you have both Rector and Necro on the board. You have 2 life against, say, FCG and you Rector up Illusions and win. Ok. Future Sight isn't the best there. But let's say you replace that Rector with Future Sight in hand. Well, it's not too hard to find Academy after abusing Necro so it's actually pretty easy to just...hardcast Future Sight.
If you've ever faced Chains of Mephistopheles you know Necro can beat it, but so can Future Sight.
Sometimes, you will actually not have the option of Rectoring for Necro OR Bargain. For example, let's say your first turn Necro gets Forced, and you topdeck Bargain the turn you were about to cast Rector. Now, you just fetch Future Sight.
All of these reasons add up, I'd like to add.
Could Echoing Truth be superior to Chain of Vapor and Rushing River? It costs 2, so it gets rid of Chalice for 1, and it has no drawback.
If you Donate an Illusions to your opponent and cast a 2nd one to dig for the removal card via Bargain you will face the problem of Echoing Truth returning not just your opponent's Illusions, but your own as well.
What happens is your Illusions' leaves-play-ability goes on stack, then your opponent's goes on. Your opponent's resolves first, so you win the game with -20 on the stack.
Otherwise yes, Echoing Truth is fine is theoretically fine. Theory isn't important though. Chain performs much stronger under circumstances where mana denial has taken most of your mana, and in my attempt to fix the problems with this deck, I include cards that are cheap to cast and subsequently make mana denial less painful.
Do you want to pay 2 mana or just 1 against Null Rod? How about Chalice for 0? Would you pay more mana for the same effect all just to have a removal spell for Chalice at 1, and only pre-board? Don't forget, you can still win in the face of Chalice for 1 by just Donating an Illusions.
