[Deck Discussion] Portal Control

[cssamerican]

Unfortunately for me I don't live in area that is contusive to Vintage tournament play, so I am relegated to playing amongst a few friends in an unlimited proxy environment. Everyone in my group has their net-decked versions of tournament decks, and everyone other than me had their own personal pile that they are proud of even if it isn't that good. So, due to the nagging or shear boredom I decided it was time to assemble my own personal pile that I could be proud of.

The first step was to choose what card or cards I wanted to build my deck around. At the time I was making this decision Fifth Dawn was being released and there was a lot of talk on the potential of Possessed Portal, especially in workshop style decks. I loved the way the card interacted within the game, but I was so sure someone was going to build a tournament winning workshop deck with it that I concentrated my efforts on a non-workshop build. This way I could still have my claim of originality without someone unveiling a decklist three cards different than mine two days before I unveil my pile to my friends.

Unlike many of my friends I had too much pride to start playing a deck that was still in its infancy, and in my own arrogance I thought I could whip up a deck that I could be satisfied with in a week or two. I can’t even begin to tell you how many ideas I tried that totally sucked. I even remember one day when I thought I had some kind of epiphany, which turned out to be a new deck building rule for me, let someone else figure out how to use Gamble successfully.

After months of testing and borrowing ideas from other people, I finally settled on my personal pile. I started playing it a few months ago, and so far I have been doing extremely well in my metagame with this.


Portal Control
Mana Sources (22)[/i]
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring    
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Island
4 Volcanic Island

Expensive Artifacts (3)
1 Masticore
1 Platinum Angel
1 Possessed Portal

Recursion (4)
4 Goblin Welder

Draw Engine (23)
1 Tinker
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
3 Intuition  
4 Brainstorm
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
4 Bazaar of Baghdad

Permissions (8)
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain

As you can see the deck borrowed a lot of ideas from Goth Slaver, this wasn't necessarily intentional, but there is only so many ways to get a high casted artifact into play.

The deck can lock the game out extremely fast because the Portal doesn't have an activation cost. The way the deck plays out many of its early wins is by Intuitioning for a couple of Squees and the Portal. The Portal gets welded in and your opponent will eventually die to beat down from a Goblin Welder if they don't have a solution for it in hand.

I’m pretty confident that the Angel and the Masticore are the right artifact creatures to include in the deck. The Masticore doubles as creature removal and as a castable finisher, and because of the decks design requirements his drawback is negligible. The Angel is a great weapon versus Aggro decks and can be key in providing you enough time for an opponent's board to be cleared by your Portal.

In my testing the deck has a lot of good match-ups. It is obviously more vulnerable to Back to Basic and Blood Moon than Goth Slaver, but neither one of theses cards are game ending by themselves. Opposing Goblin Welders are more of a nuisance for Portal Control than they are for Goth Slaver. However, it isn't effected by Null Rod, it doesn't need to target the opponent, and it doesn't have issues with its main weapon being a Legendary Artifact.

By posting this deck I am not trying to imply that it is superior to any of the Mindslaver decks, or for that matter even on equal footing with those decks. So, please try to keep the “Why play this over Control Slaver” post to a minimum. Rather I am asking if this is the most effective way to abuse Possessed Portal?
And if it is how viable do you think it is.

[Diakonov]

It is the most effective way to abuse Portal.  However, there is actually a deck already in circulation which uses this combo.

Check it out.

[Bakes]

With bazaar of Baghdad and control you totally fucked up your mana base, plus !draw! with portal?? I dont think this deck will work to well with these standards.

[Outlaw]

I like the idea alot actually, portal is a truly abusive card.  Except for one thing, the double blue requirement with bazaars is totally hard to manage.

Turn one Bazaar or land (do you want double blue?)
Turn two Land or Bazaar (do you want double blue?)

Why not just stick with thirst for knowledge and intution to set it up, that way you can smooth our your mana base a bit more.  You could also try frantic search and careful study if you really want a high discard outlet, these would also increase your blue card count.

My next question would be, if you really wanna play the bazaars why not just play Cerebral Assassin?  My thoughts would be that you are only using 3 expensive artifacts, why do you really need the bazaars?

[Bakes]

I like the idea alot actually, portal is a truly abusive card.  Except for one thing, the double blue requirement with bazaars is totally hard to manage.

Thanks for the clarifacation.

[cssamerican]

Turn one Bazaar or land (do you want double blue?)
Turn two Land or Bazaar (do you want double blue?)

I would put a Land into play 99.9% of the time. The deck is a control deck first and a combo/lock deck second. Look at Bazaar more like an uncounterable draw spell that has the potential to stick around, rather than a combo piece. I rarely ever play it until I have access to double blue.

Why not just stick with thirst for knowledge and intuition to set it up, that way you can smooth our your mana base a bit more.  You could also try frantic search and careful study if you really want a high discard outlet, these would also increase your blue card count.

I have to use Squee to break the symmetry with Possessed Portal; therefore, I wanted as many cards as possible to feed off them. By doing this it decrease the amount of time a Squee is a dead card in hand, and as far as I know Bazaar is the most synergetic card available to pair up with Squee. So it just made a lot of sense. The thing I think most people are overlooking with the Bazaar/Squee engine is that I don't need to waste counters to force it through, and once it is in play you win a lot games just on the power of that engine. If there is one thing in this deck I really like is the ability to abuse the Bazaar/Squee engine, and unlike other attempts to use that engine in control this one has many other uses for the otherwise dead card, Squee.

When it comes to the mana base I am happy with it as is. I believe it is 1 or 2 lands less from Goth Slaver list, but you don't need mana to activate an early Mindslaver and your third or fourth land drop will most likely be replaced by a Bazaar of Baghdad anyway. You can't play Frantic Search until you reach three mana, and it isn't free until you have three lands in play, which means it won't be any faster in most cases. Then it can still be countered and at most it can only draw two cards. Careful Study can be countered and will at most only draw two cards and its other drawback is that it is a sorcery. This means you can't use it to discard the Portal so it can be welded as response to an opponent's Brainstorm. This might seem like a trivial play, but it comes up quite often.

My next question would be, if you really wanna play the bazaars why not just play Cerebral Assassin?

I have tried Eastman's deck, and it is very good at abusing Sundering Titan, but I wanted to focus more on abusing Possessed Portal and I wanted to play a control deck.

[Bakes]

Your hand will be screwed by discarding it to the Bgahdad. You cannot put Bazaars in a control deck.

[Moxlotus]

Your hand will be fucked by discarding it to the Bgahdad. You cannot put Bazaars in a control deck.

Not that I'm endorsing the deck, because I am skeptical and haven't tested but...

This is a really dumb post.  Please attempt to put some insight and explanation into your posts.  If you would look at the decklist it has 4 Squees and has Intuitions to find them.  Squees ideally are to be discarded to the Bazaars-not actual good cards.  The reason I am skeptical is whether or not it is better or has any benefit compared to existing decks.

[Mixing Mike]

// Creatures
1 Pentavus
4 Goblin Welder

// Staples
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

// Engine
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
3 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Accumulated Knowledge

// Busted and Brown
4 Intuition
1 Tinker
1 Time Walk
1 Mindslaver
2 Possessed Portal
1 Mystical Tutor

// Manas
6 Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Volcanic Island
1 Darksteel Citadel
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mana Crypt


That was the build I was testing before Waterbury with Brassman.  

I took it to a YMG tourny and here's my report.....

Rnd 1: I get paired with Madness (hardest matchup outside of Assassin due to Squee's and Artifact Mutation) and lose 1-2.

Rnd 2: I beat Demonic Attorney (CS) with some tricky Intuition plays (aka he played into Portal with Brainstorm because he didn't know what I could get out with Intuition).  I won this round.

Rnd 3: I get paired to Stax and lose 1-2 to a mull to 5 and a Strip/Crucible/Trini lock.

Rnd 4: I beat 5/3 fairly easily because Portal shut him down very fast.

Rnd 5: Top 8 is locked so I don't even play out the match and they go right into Top 8.


The lock is to intuition out Pentavus, and the two Portals under an active Welder.  Here's the problem, it's not really a lock.  Here's what breaks it...

Coffin Purge, Tormod's Crypt, Lava Dart, opponnent's Welder.

I think the last one is the biggest problem with the deck.

We tried Squee, but it's a dead card without Bazaar.  This build let's it transform into a Slaver deck, while still running the Portal lock.  Bazaar was cut because we want the deck to be a tempo deck.  Bazaar takes away tempo, and therefore was not fufilling it's role.

Here's an example play...

It's the late game. My opponnent has a 7/7 Dryad out. I'm at 14, here's what happened...

I have a Welder out, and then I draw one. I play it, then follow it up with Intuition during his declare attackers step. I grab Pentavus, Mindslaver, and Portal. He is more or less forced to give me Pentavus, but it no longer matters. I block his dude with my untapped Welder, and use the other to weld in my Mindslaver EOT.

I Take my turn. I active Mindslaver, then pass.

I weld in Portal, make him play a don of draw spells, then have him sac Dryad to Portal. He sees he can't win anymore, and scoops.

I have yet to get to test the other possible build that I think could work,that frame consisting of a lot of tutors, 3 Intuitions, lots of stuff to weld in, kinda like the frame of Hadley's "The Game".

The BIGGEST concern about making a deck with Portal is if it's better than Mindslaver.  I'd say it's not simply because you Slave once and it's hard to lose whereas with Portal you have to wait a few turns before you offically win, and the board may be unfavorable to have a Portal in play.

[StarOrc]

I have 2 Suggestions for you.
1: Deep Analysis: This is good to discard to Bazaar and breaks the drawback. It is a game breaker against control because its hard to counter and draws you cards. If you chose to run 3 its absolutely a house if you Intuition for them.

2: Pentavus: The same Portal lock can be achieved with a Welder in play, Pentavus in hand, and Portal in the Yard with 1 artifact in play.
You weld in the Portal and discard the Pentavus, then after you untap weld in the Pentavus at good time, make a token then next untap weld in the portal for the token. At this point you can make tokens each turn to sac to the Portal or Sac the Portal to itself on your opponents endstep and then Weld in the Portal for a token after you draw. Finally when you've gone through 3 tokens you can make a token and sac the Pents to the Portal and weld it in for the token.... Its a little more complicated but it works

Other than that I would suggest using Demonic Tutor and Yawgwill but I think those should be in any deck that can possibly play them...

Peace
Corey

EDIT: While I was posting Mixing Mike got to the Pentavus suggestion before me.....

[Royal Ass.]

I give you props for working on something differient.  

If I were you I would run 4 intuitions, maybe cutting a thirst for the 4th.

If you were to get rid of the bazaars, you could try some kind of COW land recursion deal to keep bringing back and sacing a land every turn.  You could intuition for COW- and two other cards and then bring the COW into play with a welder and start a recursion every turn to sac to the portal.  If you did this you could replace masticor with trike or even pentavus to have an alternative lock mechanisim.  

Anyway, that is just an idea as it would allow you to nix the squee-bazaar engine.

Good luck

[cssamerican]

The lock is to intuition out Pentavus, and the two Portals under an active Welder.  Here's the problem, it's not really a lock.  Here's what breaks it...
Coffin Purge, Tormod's Crypt, Lava Dart, opponnent's Welder.
I think the last one is the biggest problem with the deck.

Goblin Welder is the reason I included Masitcore in my list, and I assuming that is the reason you included a Mindslaver. Obviously Mindslaver worked better with for your deck because of your Portal engine, Pentavus. Whereas I used Masticore because it worked really well with my Portal engine, Squee.

Due to the nature of the Squee lock, Lava Dart is worthless to break the lock. The end result will be opponent will have no land, no hand then you can start looking for a kill condition. However, I will agree this is a huge weakness for the Pentavus lock strategy.

Obviously graveyard hate like Tormod's Crypt and Coffin Purge makes Welders less effective. However, if you Tinkered a Portal into play and are using the Squee lock you can you can sacrifice most of your board and your non-squee cards and "Wait" them out. Once they sacrifice the threat to your engine than you can start discarding the Squees to the Portal. This is another reason why the deck should have a lot of draw, just so you can use the Portal without complete dependence on a recursion engine. I think this is another weakness with the Pentavus approach.

The BIGGEST concern about making a deck with Portal is if it's better than Mindslaver. I'd say it's not simply because you Slave once and it's hard to lose whereas with Portal you have to wait a few turns before you offically win, and the board may be unfavorable to have a Portal in play.

The unfavorable board position is the one reason I am running Platinum Angel; however, in most cases a Portal in play equals a win at least as often as a single Mindslaver activation. My only concern is how often a Portal loses in cases in which a recurring Mindslaver would have won.

you could try some kind of COW land recursion deal to keep bringing back and sacing a land every turn.

Both players need to sacrifice permanents or discard cards every turn; therefore, COW land recursion wouldn't be able to keep up indefinitely unless you could play multiple lands a turn.


I still can't figure out why everyone seems to dislike the idea of using Bazaar/Squee as a supplemental draw engine. I mean this is the engine that Dragon has been using to beat control in the long game through card advantage for years. I know most people say it doesn't work with decks that need double blue, but I think the real reason for this belief is no one has had any other uses for the extra Squees. People with good reason have followed the logic that dead cards in control decks were bad. That logic is still right, but Squee is never dead in this deck because it has so many uses; therefore, Bazaar loses the drawback of carrying 4 dead cards. Which makes me believe that it becomes playable in this control deck. In my testing this engine was one of the things about the deck I really liked. I can't tell you how many times I won games because turns 3, 4, 5, and 6 I drew two extra cards without even casting a spell. So I really think this is something many of you should at least test before jumping to a conclusion.

[Mixing Mike]

Well, good to see you're getting some positive results.

The only thing I don't like about Bazaar is how it takes up a whole turn's tempo.  Running Squee is the better lock, and Masticore is just something I guess I overlooked.  Great job with the deck, really, very impressive.  It's very resilient to all the hate I had been having trouble with.  I'll get some of the stuff together and get some testing in.

I still want to see how the Madness matchup for you is.  I'd assume it's still quite unfavorable.

My only concern is how often a Portal loses in cases in which a recurring Mindslaver would have won.

This is also one of my biggest concerns.  I think making the deck able to abuse Mindslaver AND Portal will give the most optimal results.  Being able to play Stax and C.S. all in one deck sounds really powerful.  I mean, if you're already running Welders, why not run a Mindslaver too?


I see you're also running Intuitions.  They're the only card in this build I don't actually like.  I say this because without Pentavus, you can't Intuition for a lock and shake your opponents hand.  I think EVERY deck in T1 needs the most ways possible to allow themselves a game win.  Pentavus also helps greatly in the Madness matchup, whereas Masticore and Angel aren't quite a good.

[Royal Ass.]

Thanks for the clarification!!
  I actually really like the idea.  I composed a deck list for control slaver that used Bazaars and squee and used intuition.  (i made it for a friend who had a playset of bazaars and drains and likes to make the most expensive decks ever while still being competative)  Anyway, that deck list was similar to yours except it used the old slaver lock recuring a land with COW.  I cant say that it is better than TFK CS though.

One thing I will say, is that your deck would be difficult to run in a five or maybe even 10 proxy enviornment since it requires drains and bazaars.


For the hell of it, here is my Bazaar Slaver list.
DRAW/SEARCH
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Brainstorm
4 Intuition
1 Ancestral
1 Timewalk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Tinker
COUNTER
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
Goblins
3 Squee Goblin
4 Goblin Welder
Welder Fodder
1 Mindslaver
1 Platinum Angel
1 Triskillion
1 Duplicant
2 Crucible of World
MANA
1 Lotus
5 Mox
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
4 Fetchland
4 Volcanic Island
4 Island
1 Strip Mine
2 Sea of Synod

[cssamerican]

I still want to see how the Madness matchup for you is.  I'd assume it's still quite unfavorable.

I see you're also running Intuitions.  They're the only card in this build I don't actually like.  I say this because without Pentavus, you can't Intuition for a lock and shake your opponents hand.  I think EVERY deck in T1 needs the most ways possible to allow themselves a game win.  Pentavus also helps greatly in the Madness matchup, whereas Masticore and Angel aren't quite a good.

Your right that Bazaar-Madness is one of the more problematic match-ups. I usually go for the Angel and use my drawing power to protect her, and hope they don't have Wonder maindecked. I must admit though this isn't a deck that shows up a lot in my metagame, so it isn't something that I have worked on. I am sure there are some good sideboard solutions such as FTK to help the match-up. But again by testing in this area is limited.

Intuition is critical to the deck, not only to get the threats, but to grab Squees and get the drawing engine going. Usually if I have an early Welder I will Intuition for 2 Squees and the Portal. Of course the drawback here is I need a discard outlet to dump the Portal in the yard. This hasn't been a huge problem, but at times I have wished I had 2 Portals maindecked so I could respond to a few EOT Brainstorm play that I was unable to because I didn't have a way to discard the Portal. However, the deck list is very tight it is extremely difficult to cut anything, if you cut a TFK you become too reliable on the Bazaar engine, if you cut Mystical Tutor you weaken Tinker and become more vulnerable to graveyard hate, if you remove Time Walk you lose some nice tempo generating plays. So as you can see it isn't an easy decision, but I can see this as a possible required change to make the deck more aggressive at limiting an opponent's ability to effectively use their card drawing spells.

[orgcandman]

Without wanting to reveal too much tech (my team IS actively working on a similar deck) I do want to offer some advice.

The difference, seemingly, between this deck and the list for CA is that CA is an aggro deck with a powerful lock piece. Your list seems to try and put a powerful lock piece and then win with some control element. The difference is that CA puts a 7/10 (or 6/10) into play turn 2-3, and you just put up the portal. Although this seems like a small difference compare the ramifications of both gameplans.

#1 if CA sees an active welder on the board, it doesn't fret about it, because it doesn't put more than a titan in the yard for artifact sources, and then just casts an animation spell. Your plan requires welding of the portal in and out.

#2 The titan, in CA usually directly translates into immediate card advantage, and tempo advantage in the form of a huge threat. Portal is neither card advantage, nor tempo advantage(this is a huge point) and so it's entry into play is NOT spectacular. With squee, it can become advantage over time, but titan's ability is immediate.

#3 CA uses bazaar as it's primary draw engine to get combo pieces, not caring about losing card advantage as it's combo gains card and tempo advantage. Your deck seemingly uses thirst as a primary draw engine to gain card advantage, and then bazaar to counter-act the card advantage you may have gained to fetch out a lock piece that doesn't translate into recovery.

If you look, CA is a major tempo advantage deck, which is why it can afford to lose card advantage at times. You have a control deck, which is almost always a card advantage strategy, which means you need to wait until you get your squee's online before you can shift to your desired draw engine (bazaar). And thirst/intuition costing 3, you can't get your goods online quick enough.

Using portal to lock the board is strong, but you have to be in a winning position to use it. Otherwise, you've just locked yourself on an unstable board, and some other deck MAY be able to capitalize on it, whereas you won't.

[Mixing Mike]

Making people play into Portal will let you wins the game even moreso than say Plagarize.

Having 2 Portals and a Pentavus squeezed in there would just make the Intuitions a perfect fit IMO.  Maybe -1 Squee, and -1 Bazaar would work out.  I'm thinking this is alright because you're adding 2 more things to pitch to Bazaar.  3 Bazaar should be fine.  I'd think 3 Squees would be okay with 3 Bazaars, but that's something only testing could show.

[cssamerican]

#1 if CA sees an active welder on the board, it doesn't fret about it, because it doesn't put more than a titan in the yard for artifact sources, and then just casts an animation spell. Your plan requires welding of the portal in and out.

You are right in that Goblin Welder is a problem. I chose to use Masticore to handle that problem, another option would be a Lava Dart maindecked; however, I like Masticore because it can double as a win condition. Just to clarify something though, my plan is not Weld the Portal in and out. In most case all I want to do is Weld or Tinker it in and win right there.

#2 The titan, in CA usually directly translates into immediate card advantage, and tempo advantage in the form of a huge threat. Portal is neither card advantage, nor tempo advantage(this is a huge point) and so it's entry into play is NOT spectacular. With squee, it can become advantage over time, but titan's ability is immediate.

This point is irrelevant, if they are unable to win with what they have or remove the Portal they will loss. The Titan in many cases will be better against Aggro decks; however, the Titan isn’t that big of a threat versus combo, and most control decks will have a chance to draw into a solution. What makes Portal so good is you can’t draw into solutions, it basically is a Jester Cap that caps their whole library, then turns itself into a Smokestack with two counters on it.

#3 CA uses bazaar as it's primary draw engine to get combo pieces, not caring about losing card advantage as it's combo gains card and tempo advantage. Your deck seemingly uses thirst as a primary draw engine to gain card advantage, and then bazaar to counter-act the card advantage you may have gained to fetch out a lock piece that doesn't translate into recovery.

I am having a difficult time understanding the point you are trying to make, so let me explain how the draw engine works. The deck uses Thirst For Knowledge as its basic draw; the deck also uses the Bazaar/Squee engine as a long-term card advantage engine. Both card drawing engines can utilize Squee for their discard requirements and either one of them can drop an artifact in the graveyard for welding.  I am not using Bazaar as a digging machine without caring about card advantage like a more aggressive deck like CA might do.

Using portal to lock the board is strong, but you have to be in a winning position to use it.

If your position is horrible you will get Platinum Angel first, then you will use the Portal to lock them out of a way to remove the Angel. Then if they have say an Exalted Angel in play, you just wait until they have to sacrifice it to the Portal before you start swinging with your Angel.


Mike, I will have to try some different configurations to see what works best.

[Covetous]

I think that bazaar simply doesn't fit into a control deck.  True, squee can eliminate/reduce the card-disadvantage inherent to bazaar, but trying to get UU up for drain (or keep cards in your hand for force) works against the idea of bazaar.  Even worse, you need 4 mana to use your slaver.  The beauty of cerebral assassin (the worst deck name ever--it should simply be Bazaar Titan) is the synergy--once you drop your Titan into the yard, you only need 1-2 mana to get it into play, and once it's in play, you don't need any further mana input to have it be useful.  Not the same with mindslaver.  The only other successful decks using bazaar are decks that really take advantage of discarding and/or the graveyard (dragon, madness).

As has already been stated, portal by itself doesn't really do much.  You would be better off trying to put it into an intuition-stax deck where it has massive synergy, rather than into a deck which lacks this synergy.  Basically, the problem that I see with this deck is the bazaar/squee engine.  True, Squee makes the portal one-sided in your favor, but it's not worth the loss of a land drop to poop out a bazaar.  Bazaar simply lacks synergy with mana drain, mindslaver and the control strategy in general, and this deck doesn't have enough other synergy to make up for it.  If you want to run bazaar + portal, don't run a control deck.  Run a combo-ish/aggro-ish deck, more similar to CA.  

I have considered running mono-red stacker using bazaar as a draw engine.  For example:
4 welder
4 juggy
4 su-chi
2 sundering titan
2 duplicant
2 (razormane) masticore
2 triskelion
2 mindslaver
4 bazaar
4 squee
2 crucible of worlds (allows you to discard lands and play them; also allows infinite slaver lock with artifact lands)
8 solomoxcrypt
1 mana vault
1 lotus petal (good because you miss land drops for bazaar)
4 mishra's workshop
1 tolarian academy / artifact land / ancient tomb
1 strip mine / artifact land / ancient tomb
2 ancient tomb
2 darksteel citadel / great furnace
8 mountain

Unfortunately, bazaar has negative synergy with the wasteland mana-denial strategy that makes stacker not suck horribly.  Due to this, this deck probably wouldn't work that well, but at least it has more internal synergy (welder/bazaar, su-chi/mindslaver, crucible/bazaar) than a control variant.

[xaos]

I don't know if anyones gone this route yet, but I 've had a few thoughts about a Portal deck that would just power out Portal as soon as possible, then takes it from there.  I'm nowhere near certain this is a good direction to travel in, but think it's worth having other people fire back some thoughts about.

First off, I think this idea is possible only with the "Fake" draw spells, such as Intuition, Demonic Tutor, and Impulse.  Other ones, like Future Sight, Gifts Ungiven(I understand the mana cost for these two is rather prohibitive for this deck), Sleight of Hand, Flash of Insight, or Index may be worth looking at. Being able to play Portal NOW, and then find those Squees, Welders, or win conditions shortly afterward seems very good.

With this direction, you first have to find the Portal. You would really want this in the opening hand, so I think a high Portal count and additional methods of getting it are a total must.  Demonic, Vampiric, Mystical, and Tinker can fit the bill nicely.

As for Bazaar being a primary(or even secondary) search method, I don't think it could work.  If you're trying to power out a Portal in the earliest turns of the game, you almost always won't be able to afford that land drop on something that won't produce mana.  On top of that, once you do get the Portal in, Bazaar is total shit without silly tricks aimed at getting the portal in and out of play.  Granted, dropping Portal into the grave and welding it in is some good, but it takes a turn for Welder to stop picking his nose and get to work, then playing Bazaar and dropping Portal into the grave. Plus, focusing the deck on those synergies opens you up to a TON of sideboarded hate, of which I'm not going to bother naming off.  Bazaar's quick digging capabilities and synergy with both Welder & Squee may still be good in the deck, but I think it is the bad synergy between Portal and Bazaar that outweighs it.

Lowering the reliance on Welder(I wouldn't suggest running a list with Welders totally absent) means we need a really good way to push through the Portal.  Abusing fast manas in a combo-style manner seems like the best approach.  Probably Workshop, the 0-mana artifact gang, Sol Ring, Mana Vault.  I think a strong helping of the artifact acceleration is necessary, since the Portal comes out hard and fast, there will be a few EOT Portal triggers that you can't ditch a Squee for, and as such need something to sac or discard.

 Duress as a four-of seems to be a really solid choice, as whatever is in their opening hand( +/-3 or so) *should* be the only cards they see all game, so being able to pluck out one of the few relevant cards they may have within their reach is a really strong ability.

I can't provide a decklist or anything, because I really don't know where this deck would have to go to be good.  I was just throwing out an idea I've had regarding what the deck could do, in the hopes that someone may get some benefit out of it.

[Bakes]

I dont know maybe its just me but I am having a problem with running drains and bazaars in the same deck. It is an exellent idea and probably took alot of thought but they just dont fit in  the same deck together.

Maybe you could try running circular logics especially with this deck, would give you exellent draw and cheap counterspell.

[onelovemachine]

4 Squee, Goblin Nabob

If you do keep bazaars as a draw engine, go down to three of these imo.  It frees up one slot which is actually quite huge.  You can only intuition for three, you can only bazaar away three.

[Mixing Mike]

As for Bazaar being a primary(or even secondary) search method, I don't think it could work.  If you're trying to power out a Portal in the earliest turns of the game, you almost always won't be able to afford that land drop on something that won't produce mana.  On top of that, once you do get the Portal in, Bazaar is total shit without silly tricks aimed at getting the portal in and out of play.

This is the reason why I didn't include Bazaar in my build.  The tempo it takes away from you is a bit to much to deal with, and the lack of synergy it has with Bazaar.  This is why I think Pentavus is necessary in any Portal deck.  It allows you to run a bunch more tutors and a flexible cards, if this deck can be flexable that is....

Lowering the reliance on Welder(I wouldn't suggest running a list with Welders totally absent) means we need a really good way to push through the Portal.

Lowering the reliance on Welders is key to this decks success, but I don't think it can really run without them.  What happens if you get out a Portal and you need to sac it?  How could you get it back without running more than you really need?

Duress [takes] whatever is in their opening hand( +/-3 or so) *should* be the only cards they see all game, so being able to pluck out one of the few relevant cards they may have within their reach is a really strong ability.

There's not to much room for that.  I'd really like to try it out though.  I think it might be a bit of a problem because it slows down your win turn by 1.  But then again it helps to build your manabase, but it requires you to have black mana, which isn't really helpful to much else to the deck.

[cssamerican]

I don't know if anyones gone this route yet, but I 've had a few thoughts about a Portal deck that would just power out Portal as soon as possible, then takes it from there. I'm nowhere near certain this is a good direction to travel in, but think it's worth having other people fire back some thoughts about.

If you build a deck that just tries to power the Portal out on turn 2. You will probably have no cards in hand, very few cards on the board, and no way to pay for its upkeep. Not mention, any deck that tries to ramp up to 8 mana on turn 2 is going to have some serious consistency issues. If you were to go this route, the Tinker deck would be the frame I would look at.

Duress as a four-of seems to be a really solid choice, as whatever is in their opening hand( +/-3 or so) *should* be the only cards they see all game, so being able to pluck out one of the few relevant cards they may have within their reach is a really strong ability.

I tried Duress and it was a very good card, but if you go this route you force yourself to use the Pentavus engine. Not that the Pentavus engine is a bad thing, but it does open you up to more hate cards. I would also look at [card]Mesmeric Fiend[/card] (I think it is an underrated card in today's metagame) because if you plan on Portal locking them early this could be much more devastating because it can remove your problem creatures such as Goblin Welder and Squee, and it also prevents you from being forced to discard cards your opponent wants you to or cards he doesn't mind being discarded, such as Smokestack, Mindslaver, and CoW.

This would basically take the deck that I posted and make the following changes:
-4 Bazaar
-4 Squee
+1 Portal
+1 Pentavus
+1 Vampiric Tutor
+1 Demonic Tutor
3 Duress or Mesmeric Fiend
+1 land (Of course you would have to adjust the mana base so it could produce black mana)

Maybe you could try running circular logics especially with this deck, would give you exellent draw and cheap counterspell.

Bazaar is the only discard out let that is useable. TFK discard effect is upon resolution and Intuition isn’t a discard effect, so neither of them has a ton of synergy with Circular Logic. As far as playing it for the madness cost.