Magic Without the 4 of Rule

[Anusien]

I'm curious what decks would be better without the 4 of rule.  Current banned/restricted lists for whatever format, but there's no maximum card limit.  What decks become much better in each format?  Would GrimLong want 8 Dark Ritual instead of 4 Cabal Ritual?  12?  How many Brainstorms is too many?

To start things off, I was imagining T2 heartbeat.  I've lost at least one game because I had to use too many Early Harvests to set up.  So what about T2 heartbeat with just double the number of copies of each card in the deck except the singletons.  That way you could Weird for 8, or try again if you screw up.

In Extended, how many Counterspells would you even want to run?

[Harlequin]

I heard about a deck that was:

18 Plains
20 Plated Slivers
10 Pacify
12 Disenchant

I think it was in a format that was no 4card limit commons only.  Fairly resilliant deck :p

[Illissius]

For one thing, being able to run eight or more Cabal Therapies in my Rector decks would be awesome. All other sacrificial options suck mightily in comparison. Most other decks building around a specific card or cards are in a similar situation -- Survival of the Fittest, for example. Or the Buried Alive Kiki/Hussar combo.

How about this, for example:

10 Swamp
16 Dark Ritual
10 Duress
10 Buried Alive
10 Reanimate
1 Karmic Guide
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Sky Hussar
1 Gigapede

Pretty broken.

Or:

10 Swamp
26 Dark Ritual
16 Tendrils of Agony
8 Ill-Gotten Gains

Alternately:

20 Lotus Petal
20 Dark Ritual
10 Duress
10 Goblin Charbelcher

(In case it hasn't become clear: in amounts greater than four, I think Dark Ritual would be the most abusable card in Legacy by a margin.)

I'm also pretty sure that (a) you would want more than 4 Accumulated Knowledge, and (b) Accumulated Knowledge would be far too slow in this format. As would Counterspell. Every "viable" deck would choose a couple of cards, and abuse the unliving fuck out of them.

A tad like 3CB, with 60 card decks.

[wethepeople]

22 black lotuses, 20 channels, and 18 fireballs ftw.

//wtp.

[herbig]

22 black lotuses, 20 channels, and 18 fireballs ftw.

Or perhaps some combination of loti, timetwisters, and tendrils, so Force doesn't kill you.  This discussion is kind of silly, since if this were the case then not a single one of the archtypes of any format would be visible.

[Cross]

I feel something like 35 lotus, 24 mind's desire, 1 tendrils would be the best.

[Illissius]

Current banned/restricted lists for whatever format, but there's no maximum card limit.

[That0neguy]

as far as no restricted lists goes > 19 Lotus 40 Ancestral 1 Tendrils.  Although I do like the minds desire idea.

back on topic though:

In this format remember that deck size really doesn't matter because as long as the proper ratio is kept, and your not playing with a restricted list so non T1 frmats, it should function the same as a 60 card deck.  So in T2 I would play somthing like the standard heartbeat ratios except multiply everything x100000 except for the tutor targets like maga.  This will almost guarentee that you never draw dead cards.  I might play around with some of the other ratios as well most likley incresing the ratio of heartbeats and early harvests.

Any tutor basically becomes a wish since the chance to draw situational targets is next to nothing and this could lead to powerful toolbox/combo stratagies.

Legacy Tide would run more tides and resets and brainstorms, and maby a few more FOW.  However decks could very easily use the inifinte decksize idea to combat this deck.

Thresh might want more mental notes and would probably replace the bears with more mongeese.

Im not sure where exactly goblins would go with this, but im sure that it would benifit from this change.

for T1 I think that pitchlong would probably run 7 FOW and 8 dark rituals.

Meandeck tendrils would be INSANE, with a bunch of extra rituals,  You might even consider cutting some of the off color/colorless sources for more rituals.

Ichorid would probably be cut down to be some mix for ichorids bazaars and gravetrolls or maby even imps since you won't need to dig as far for ichorids and extras would go to feeding ichorids.  Maby with some tutors for bombs splashed in, although it would kill very consitently turn 2ish-3ish I would bet.  This deck might also benifit from the ratios idea, since it might not even want to play mana sources.

It would be fun to play a deck with 8ish drains but im not sure how good it would be.

[Jacob Orlove]

Okay, so something like:

X Rits (probably like ~20)
Y Unmask (to make sure the first Rit resolves)
Z Tutors (all of them, probably)
1 Yawgwill
1 Tendrils
? Other Mana

Basically, Unmask makes sure your first Rit resolves, since you probably don't have the second B for Duress. Then you go something like rit rit rit tutor will rit rit rit tutor tendrils.

[RaZe]

Okay, so something like:

X Rits (probably like ~20)
Y Unmask (to make sure the first Rit resolves)
Z Tutors (all of them, probably)
1 Yawgwill
1 Tendrils
? Other Mana

Basically, Unmask makes sure your first Rit resolves, since you probably don't have the second B for Duress. Then you go something like rit rit rit tutor will rit rit rit tutor tendrils.

Vintage restricted list

1 Demo
1 Vamp
? Grim Tutors

So you might die from Grim life loss?

How about? [Legacy]

20 Lotus Petal
5 Tendrils of Agony
15 Dark Rituals
20 Infernal Contract

[Godder]

Chromatic Sphere + Helm of Awakening .

[Hi-Val]

I like Jacob's idea of Unmask. How about something like

X Dark Rit
Y Land Grant
1 Bayou
Z Belcher
A Unmask

I figure Belcher is probably the easiest kill here.

[parallax]

The problem with all of those combo decks is none of them will beat:

58 Force of Will
1 Island
1 Flying Men

Unmask trades 2 for 1 with Forces and none of those decks have 20 must-counters.

Edit: The deck needs to be modified somewhat to avoid losing all 20 life to Forces against >60 decks, but I think the concept stands.

I think the best control deck is:

50% Force of Will
20% Island
20% Accumulated Knowledge
10% Foil
1 Battle of Wits
1 Reminisce

I'd expect a pretty strong metagame triangle of Aggro > Control > Combo > Aggro. This format pretty much condenses all the archetypes into their purest form.

[Anusien]

Wouldn't you just play something like
75 mana sources
225 Battle of Wites

[That0neguy]

If you played belcher you would probably want to make the deck really big so that with 4 bayou you would have a good shot at not hitting one befoer 20 cards.  That way you could play around infy FOW.deck by hard casting belcher after you blow your hand.

[parallax]

If you played belcher you would probably want to make the deck really big so that with 4 bayou you would have a good shot at not hitting one befoer 20 cards.  That way you could play around infy FOW.deck by hard casting belcher after you blow your hand.

What happens when they hardcast FoW on your Belcher?

Wouldn't you just play something like
75 mana sources
225 Battle of Wits

Not sure exactly what you're trying to say here. Are you talking about a straight Battle of Wits deck? Because that would lose to both FoW.dek and turn one combo decks. If you mean that the FoW deck should run 200-300 copies of Battle of Wits, I probably wouldn't actually run BoW as the win condition in that deck. I chose it in my post for humor. I would probably run a percentage of Volcanic Islands and kill with Volcanic Geyser so I can win with a hand full of counters after an AK for like, 100. Another possibility is to include a small percentage of Fire/Ice as they pitch to Force, can cycle, and double as creature removal.

[Hi-Val]

Oooo, I think I've got it.

X Island
Y Foil
Z NETHER SPIRIT

[parallax]

Oooo, I think I've got it.

X Island
Y Foil
Z NETHER SPIRIT

I hope no one scouts you. You could end up going 1-0-X.

Never mind. Clean-up step, FTW?

I still think the deck would have problems due to (a) low counterspell density against combo and (b) eventually ending up with multiple Spirits in the grave in a control mirror and (c) aggro pwnage.

Updated control deck:
50% Force of Will
10% Island
09% Volcanic Island
01% Mountain
20% Accumulated Knowledge
05% Fire // Ice
05% Foil

Workshop prison:
20% Mishra's Workshop
05% Wasteland
50% Sphere of Resistance
10% Smokestack
10% Triskelion
05% Crucible of Worlds

[herbig]

15 Orim's Chant
20 Mind's Desire
1 Demonfire  Tendrils of Agony
24 Black Lotus

Sideboard:
15 Gemstone Cavern

This would be equipped to fight through first turn forces as well as first turn combo decks.  Demonfire is cooler than Tendrils and gets around Stifle, assuming they didn't stifle Desire in the first place.

Edit: scratch Demonfire, I'm dumb.

[Hi-Val]

X Mishra's Workshop
Y Chalice of the Void
1 Darksteel Colossus

Hmmm.

I feel like if you can run out Shops smoothly then this is an option.

[parallax]

Chalice-Shop should beat combo on the play, but good luck resolving Chalice for 2 against FoW.dec. I think Chalice-Shop should probably look like:

W Force of Will
X Mishra's Workshop
Y Chalice of the Void
1 Colossus

This would probably allow you to beat combo even on the draw, beat Mountain-Lackey-Go, and give you a shot of resolving Chalice@2 against control.

Looking at Herbig's deck (Lotus and Desire are restricted), I think Chant might be a good deck.

Gemstone Caverns
Orim's Chant
Plains
Tundra
Accumulated Knowledge
Isochron Scepter -- Is this even necessary?
some win condition

This deck is a good bet to beat combo and most aggro on the play or draw. Orim's Chant gives you leverage against Force of Will in the control match-up, but to what end?

[jro]

58 Force of Will
1 Island
1 Flying Men

That totally loses to Mishra's Factory.dec.  It also loses to any combo deck that can play more than 1 threat per turn.  (Granted, that's hard to do without resolving Lotus, but still.)  Pitching a card to FoW means that in the long run you can only Force once every other turn.

[parallax]

58 Force of Will
1 Island
1 Flying Men

That totally loses to Mishra's Factory.dec.  It also loses to any combo deck that can play more than 1 threat per turn.  (Granted, that's hard to do without resolving Lotus, but still.)  Pitching a card to FoW means that in the long run you can only Force once every other turn.

Yes, any FoW.dec will lose to Factory.dec. And Factory.dec will lose to combo.dec. That's the metagame triangle. Combo > Aggro > Control > Combo. I think you'll find that applies here more than anywhere else. As far as losing to combo, That combo deck has to play 1 threat a turn without using any Rituals to run me out of counters. Also, see my updated list with Accumulated Knowledge. The basis of the deck is Force of Will, Island, Accumulated Knowledge and I think that will beat most combo decks.

[freakish777]

Considering cards are restricted, there is a point in keeping decks at 60 cards (unless you're only running 1 Yawg Win and are tutoring it anyway).



1 Petal
1 Lotus
1 Jet
13 USea
15 Rituals
1 AR
1 DT
1 Yawg Win
1 Tendrils
9 Grim
16 Force of Will

?

Force is better than Unmask as it's given the chance to beat "the mirror" that runs unmask instead.  For this deck I think percentages would be better (as you wouldn't lose to the likes of Island Extract Sapphire Extract, etc)


I'm probably no good at this.

[jro]

Yes, any FoW.dec will lose to Factory.dec. And Factory.dec will lose to combo.dec. That's the metagame triangle. Combo > Aggro > Control > Combo.

Factory.dec only needs (say) 15 Factories to kill a heavy FoW deck pretty quick.  The remaining cards could go to beating combo.

As far as losing to combo, That combo deck has to play 1 threat a turn without using any Rituals to run me out of counters.

If it's the right threat, that shouldn't be too hard.  With unlimited restricteds, Ancestral Recall would be a good one, because letting it resolve would just put you even further behind.  Otherwise, Cabal Therapy is a pretty good cheap threat against a fistful of FoW.  It wouldn't really help when combo-ing out, but that's no different than playing real Magic.

This format (either with or without unlimited restricted cards) seems like it would actually generate some fairly interesting, varied decks.  All of the obvious strategies seem to have fairly simple foils.

[Titanium Dragon]

Well, one amusing deck would be something like this:

X Orthinopter
Y Blazing Shoal
Z Myojin of Infinite rage

Of course, the thopter doesn't have haste, so maybe not so good - it'd only be able to go through one FoW and would have to go off turn 2, and there's no good way of making them uncounterable.

You could always go with a turboland style deck, using manabond and/or exploration in conjunction with Horn of Greed. Of course, then they'd just counter the horn, though you could potentially use manlands to evade counters.dec. It does lose to turn1combo.dec though.

20% Mishra's Workshop
05% Wasteland
50% Sphere of Resistance
10% Smokestack
10% Triskelion
05% Crucible of Worlds

Wouldn't it be better to run factories and FoWs in here? If you run factories, your kill con cannot be countered, and your FoWs can be used to stop the turn 1 combo kill. Something like:

20 Mishra's Workshop
5 Mishra's Factory
15 Sphere of Resistance
20 Force of Will

You'd still lose to Factories, but you'd beat the combo and control decks.

Maybe kobold glimpse? Heck, you could even run Leyline of Lifeforce, maybe.

20 Kobolds of Kher Keep
15 Force of Will
10 Glimpse of Nature
Black Lotus
Lotus Petal
LED
Sol Ring
Mox Emerald
Mox Sapphire
Brain Freeze
Chrome Mox
Mox Diamond
6 Forest

EDIT: What about an affinity deck?

4 Urza's Bauble
4 Mishra's Bauble
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Chrome Mox
15 Frogmite
30 FoW

Half of your deck is FoW, then the other half is used to lay out a very fast beatdown. Would probably need to be adjusted somewhat.

[parallax]

Yes, any FoW.dec will lose to Factory.dec. And Factory.dec will lose to combo.dec. That's the metagame triangle. Combo > Aggro > Control > Combo.

Factory.dec only needs (say) 15 Factories to kill a heavy FoW deck pretty quick.  The remaining cards could go to beating combo.

Factory.dec needs to run more than 15 factories to kill FoW.dec consistently. Starting around turn 6-7, FoW.dec is drawing 4-8 cards a turn off AKs. Some of those cards will be creature sanction of some sort (Fire // Ice is my choice right now).

As far as losing to combo, That combo deck has to play 1 threat a turn without using any Rituals to run me out of counters.

If it's the right threat, that shouldn't be too hard.  With unlimited restricteds, Ancestral Recall would be a good one, because letting it resolve would just put you even further behind.  Otherwise, Cabal Therapy is a pretty good cheap threat against a fistful of FoW.  It wouldn't really help when combo-ing out, but that's no different than playing real Magic.

With unlimited restricteds, Lotus-Desire is undeniably the best deck in the format. The problem is, you have to run enough Cabal Therapy to drop one a turn for several turns, and you have to drop them off permanent mana sources, i.e. swamps. Can you build a combo deck running enough swamps and Therapies that will still go off reliably turn one against non-control decks?

This format (either with or without unlimited restricted cards) seems like it would actually generate some fairly interesting, varied decks.  All of the obvious strategies seem to have fairly simple foils.

I agree with you concerning the non-unlimited restricted cards format. The fact that my control deck now contains 6-7 different cards and will probably end up having more is a good sign.

I think I'm going to add Intuition and three copies of every magic card ever printed to my control deck. That should be sufficient to answer all-factories.dec or any similarly single-minded decks.

[That0neguy]

Unrestricted ancestral lotus tendrils would be the best deck.  The threats are the cheapest and it is almost impossible to fizzle.
A typical hand would look like this:

3 lotus
4 ancestral

now on the first turn FOW.dec only has access to 3 counterspells, so they need to guess which is more important to stop the Lotus or the ancestral.  With this hand if they decide to stop the lotuses they don't lose this turn.  If they try to stop the ancestrals this turn You should combo out no problem.  Now if they stop the lotuses and you topdeck 2 lotus over the next 2 turns and they counter the first and the second resolves you can play 3 ancestrals in a row which should draw you a new mix of lotus and ancestral.

This is assuming that its not one of the more recent FOW.decs running AK where they have the possibility to not draw 3 first turn counters.

Now against desire.dec the clear plan is to stop the lotuses, since they need to resolve 2 of them to cast a desire.  So with the same theoretical 3 counter hand desire.dec would need a hand of 5 Lotus 2 desire.  And if FOW.dec does pull of the 3 counter hand Desire takes much more to reload, and has a possibility to fizzle with only a desire of 2-3.

[Illissius]

One finicky problem with 1 Tendrils, X Lotus, Y Ancestral is that Ancestral only draws in multiples of  three -- so if Tendrils is your bottom card, you're fucked. I'd recommend adding a couple of copies of something like Demonic Tutor, Burning Wish, Desire, Timetwister, extra Tendrils, or whatever.

[parallax]

Unrestricted ancestral lotus tendrils would be the best deck.  The threats are the cheapest and it is almost impossible to fizzle.
A typical hand would look like this:

3 lotus
4 ancestral

now on the first turn FOW.dec only has access to 3 counterspells, so they need to guess which is more important to stop the Lotus or the ancestral.  With this hand if they decide to stop the lotuses they don't lose this turn.  If they try to stop the ancestrals this turn You should combo out no problem.  Now if they stop the lotuses and you topdeck 2 lotus over the next 2 turns and they counter the first and the second resolves you can play 3 ancestrals in a row which should draw you a new mix of lotus and ancestral.

This is assuming that its not one of the more recent FOW.decs running AK where they have the possibility to not draw 3 first turn counters.

Now against desire.dec the clear plan is to stop the lotuses, since they need to resolve 2 of them to cast a desire.  So with the same theoretical 3 counter hand desire.dec would need a hand of 5 Lotus 2 desire.  And if FOW.dec does pull of the 3 counter hand Desire takes much more to reload, and has a possibility to fizzle with only a desire of 2-3.

Either Lotus-Ancestral or Lotus-Desire is the best deck in that format, and it's not very interesting aside from arguing which of the two is more consistent against Forces. Perhaps I'll put some math into it this weekend, but I don't really feel like discussing non-restricted formats. Right now, I believe you are probably correct. Lotus-Desire would be more fun to play, though.

I'm more interested in developing the combo decks for Vintage and Legacy. I think Infernal Tutor or Grim Tutor are the best engines for the Vintage list:

W some kind of disruption - Cabal Therapy?
X swamps/mana sources
Y Rituals
Z Infernal/Grim Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
100 Death Wish (Extract-proofing)