Not So Parfait

[myhellfire1134]

From the advice i got from the last thread i made Blueberry Parfait i made this deck. Also i was told to mae kanother thread. So here goes.


Not So Parfait



spells
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Brainstorm
4 Mana drain
1 Enlightened Tutor
4 Force of will
2 Swords to Plowshares
4 Tithe


Enchantments
2 Aura of Silence
2 Humility
4 Back to Basics
3 Goblin Trenches


Artifacts
1 Mox pearl
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
3 Crucible of Worlds



Lands
2 Island
3 Plains
4 Plateau
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
4 Tundra
4 Fetch (as long as it fetches white)

 Basicly uses Humilty to hurt almost nay deck, since most decks need creatures to win. I still like to run blue for not only counter magic but Back to Basics. Also Blue supplies a drawing cards. Back to basics stalls until the wasteland/ Strip mine and crucible kicks in. Then its pretty much over. Aure of Silence helps. If you can ppump it out first turn its like a trinisphere.  Tithe worls as a Land Tax replacement. My win is Goblin Trenches which i found better than the other ideas sent at me for kill conditions.  SO rip this thing apart i knwo it needs help.

[Methuselahn]

I'm not sure I'd want to play this deck over Control Slaver, Oath, or even 4cc right now.  I guess I haven't seen enough evidence to prove that parfait is the better choice.  It's obvious that you haven't tested much, if at all, by the daily change in decklists.  (seen here) This doesn't help either.

[Sytupal]

I have a few issues with the whole situation that you have here in general.  

Basicly uses Humilty to hurt almost nay deck, since most decks need creatures to win.

Besides the spelling errors, you've neglected to realize that combo simply rolls over you.  You're not likely going to visit a competitive tournament environment without seeing several combo decks.  

With very few first turn answers or threats, you can't expect to beat a  mono U belcher or a quicker combo deck going off on turn 1 or 2.  

You may annoy several Slaver or Cerebral Asassin players by running Humility and Aura of Silence.

The issue is with their counter magic and the insane ability for CA to just win with Bazaar/Welder tricks early before threats hit the table.

 It's hard to drop the 4 Casting Cost Humility or the 3 Casting cost Aura of Silence in time or just simply to actually cast it.  

I just can't see this deck simply getting through round after round of control or combo and the occasional win against 3sphere MWS decks.

[raye]

Not that it would address any of the points raised about it not being fast enough, but perhaps an Ivory Mask would help you with those combo decks. Most of them have a kill mechanism that targets. If you can get it down in time, the combo player would have to find removal or bounce. Ivory Mask is one of the old Parfait cards that got stripped out in any build I've seen recently but I recall it fondly.

Sol Ring might be a card you should consider adding.

[Rancor1]

It seems that you did not fully think this deck out. First of all, you do realize that B2B effects your dual lands, too. All eight of them? It would still be a poor choice to run four of each in the current metagame, but alongside 4 B2Bs...

As already stated, you have no way to deal with combo. Stifle may help, but a few of those really won't improve the matchup. You still have many dead cards.

I also notice a lack of Time Walk. Is there something I'm missing?

It doesn't seem that you know what you want this deck to be. It started out as Parfait/u, but now its morphed into some hybrid, that has no advantage over any other control deck there in this metagame. [/i]

[Covetous]

@Rancor1--Please don't hit the "submit" button more than once.

On this deck:
There are many ways to build UW control--it is one of the oldest successful archetypes.  I know this post isn't about Parfait, but let's be fair--this deck is parfait plus mana drain/fow.  However, the original idea behind parfait was to run mono-white or white plus a small splash in order to abuse tax/rack and own aggro really hard.  But, it simply isn't good enough to own aggro.  You need to be able to compete with combo and control as well.  Red can help vs. control (REB and friends) and black can help vs. combo (duress and friends).  But, blue really fails to help in either of these cases.  Sure, FoW is incredible, but a well-placed Orim's Chant or Abeyance can be nearly as effective vs. combo.  So, basically using parfait as a starting point for UW control is not the best idea, because Parfait sucks.  A better idea would be to take an alrerady successful deck and turn it into UW to give it a more stable manabase or more access to removal (depending on your starting point).

I would say that there are two major ways to build UW control today and expect it to not be terrible. One way is to start from a keeper-style deck and cut it down to UW, and the other is simply mono-U plus white, something like this:
4 phid
3 exalted A
4 drain
4 fow
4 leak
4 impulse or brainstorm
3 B2B
1 a recall
1 walk
1 balance
1 mystical tutor (or something better)
2 STP
2 seal of cleansing
7 solomoxen
4 tundra
4 flooded strand
4 wasteland
1 strip mine
1 plains
5 islands
? LoA

There are so many ways to build a keeper-esque UW deck that I won't even try to post a decklist, but you could probably come up with something respectable by taking a 4cc list and cutting red and black and putting in back to basics, etc.  Intuition/AK/Deep A would probably be your best draw engine in the absence of skeletal scrying, but if you wanted to be cute and run tinker/colossus you could run TFK.  Basically, I think that mono-U plus white would be better than 4cc minus black and red, because the entire point of 4cc is to use black and red to provide abilities that blue and white cannot be used for effectively.  

On some specific card choices--cards like humility, ivory mask and moat are great, but at 2WW are hard to cast quickly.  By the time they come down you might already be dead.  The format is very fast in terms of fundamental turn, and I don't think 2WW answers are the best way to win, despite how powerful they are.  However, if you want to stick with a deck like parfait, then consider rule of law--it's great with orim's chant and abeyance and owns combo.  Running B2B in a deck with >2 colors is asking for trouble.  If you want to run UW parfait with B2B, use decree of justice, sacred mesa, or mobilization as a win condition rather than trying to splash red for trenches.  Or, just cut blue for red since it's probably better.  Or, don't try to make a bad deck good--try to make a new deck or make a good deck better.

Basically my point is:
To make a good UW deck don't start with a bad deck archetype and make it UW, start with a good deck archetype and make it UW.

[Sytupal]

I don't discourage Ingenuity or creativity by any means, however in order to make an "approved" decklist better, it would require more playtesting than most can offer.  

I firmly believe that:

1: You cannot make an enchantment based build in todays metagame with the speed and power that Vintage offers, it simply can't compete.  

Now i know that This is a very controversial subject however i simply offer my opinion:

2: Leave the Creativity and Unique deck design up to people who have the time to test, tweak, and play with builds.  Teams who dedicate certain playtesting hours per week, per day, or whatever, are much more able to advise "us" whether a deck works or not.  

I bring up number 2 for several reasons.  One, because i don't want people to think that i discourage rogue or unique design, but if you don't have the time to test, and it honestly is a list that you feel can compete, don't just immedietely post it on the mana drain thinking that everyone here will "fix" all of the deck's problems and make it a winning deck.  Dedicating the time to play with the deck or playing with one that are already proven to play alright is serious tech.  

Whether it's been proven by an already known team or simply a group of your friends who took the time to playtest and work on the deck, doesn't matter, as long as it's been tested with success.  

If you have friends who have more time than you do, give a list or proxy up a build to give to them.  This way, whether or not you can physically test, your friends can, as long as they test properly of course.  


Making handfuls of changes throughout two days of a decklist being up on the drain is definitely not a way to make a deck.

[Rancor1]

@Rancor1--Please don't hit the "submit" button more than once.

Sorry 'bout that, just an accident.

Look, we've been arguing about this deck for a few days without word from the creator. myhellfire1134, what do you want from this deck? Why do you think this is better than anything more established? What is your metagame? Simply put, why are you playing this deck?

[GreatCthulhu]

Is it just me, or are you entirely lacking a draw engine?  Brainstorm/Fetches doesn't seem to be enough, I'd think you need more, maybe Intuition/AK, but at least something.

[Godder]

I believe Oath is powerful enchantment-based deck in today's metagame, of sorts.

That said, if we're talking enchantment-based prison decks, artifact prison decks have a lot going for them (cheaper, MWS). The only improvement enchantments offer is that, by and large, much fewer answers are being run for enchantments than for artifacts.

The format has a Fundamental Turn of 2 (or so), but an argument can be made that you don't have to drop your answer on T2, you just have to hold off for long enough to get it down. Ivory Mask or Humility (or Rule of Law/Arcane Lab/B2B, for that matter) may not drop until T3 in some cases, but as long you can stall long enough, they win the turn they hit, more or less.

[Sytupal]

I apologize for not clarifying.  i should specifically say white-enchantment based decks.  Simply knowing that most control/useful enchantments that could even possibly see play are white.

[Berserk]

The manabase should look something like this:

3 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
6 Plains
4 Island
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Black Lotus

I guess it seems like alot of mana cards, but I took the original number of mana cards and just added basics and cut duals. Maybe cut the overall number down some? I dunno, I'm not familar with how picky the decks manabase is.

I would even consider dropping down to 2 Tundras and maybe adding another Island. If you're going to run B2B you need to take full advantage of it. Also, I don't think red fits at all. Trenches is too slow of a win condition, I'd run some Exalted Angels.

Also, finding slots for the Intuition+AK draw engine would probably be your best bet for drawing. Maybe cut Crucibles to make some room?

[Kowal]

I don't know why the hell this thread survived as long as it did.  Locked and good riddance.