whip me, beat me, feed me ice cream

[Evol daN]

For my first post I decided to talk about a deck that sucks?

Out of all the absolute trash experiments that I have done, my friends have done, or that I heard of on MWS this is one that I do not quite understand.

Ok I can read the cards… Yup, I see synergy… I see a draw engine… Ok it has hate, and a lot of it…

Yet this deck is so bad that I have been constantly made fun of at tournaments when I show with this deck. Yes even as I am tapping mana for the win… “bla bla bla that deck is sooo bad bla bla bla… you should leave” even as I top 8 against a solid field I hear “OMG I lost to first turn plains, that deck is terrible.”

Are these jokes from jokers?

Everyone knows I must be talking about parfait. (Cherry or Razor) Parfait to be precise. It is my mission to bring the community into an understanding of why this deck is so rank and oh so terrible. I would provide the answers for you if I could… but you see… I just don’t understand.

I have taken subtle variants of this deck to 5 tournaments in the past 1.5 years scoring (1 top 8), (3 top 4s), and 1 unfortunate (1-1-1, drop) incident involving sweltering heat and team ICBM (mos res-pekt).

I know that many of you have your own reasons for believing this deck to be trash, what are they!!!!

Come now mighty network of cardboard nerdz teach me why this sucks, validate my points, or poke fun of sticky ice cream topping deck names... but silence is not an option!

THE TRASH

-21 MANA
12 x Plains
  1 x Plateau
  2 x Mountains
  1 x Mox Pearl
  1 x Mox Ruby
  1 x Black Lotus
  1 x Mox Diamond
  1 x Lotus Petal
16W, 6R (excluding Mox Diamond, which is not independent).

-17 INSTANTS
4 x Swords to Plowshares
3 x Lava Dart
3 x Red Elemental Blast
2 x Argivian Find
1 x Enlightened Tutor
4 x Abeyance
(11W, 6R)

-11 Enchantments
4 x Land Tax
3 x Seal of Cleansing
1 x Aura of Silence
1 x Goblin Trenches
2 x Humility
(14W, 1R)

- 9 ARTIFACTS      - 1 CREATURE
2 x Phyrexian Furnace      1 x Gorilla Shaman
4 x Scroll Rack
3 x Goblin Charbelcher


SIDE BOARD (What I would currently run)
3 x Sacred Ground
4 x Orim’s Chant
2 x Pyrostatic Pillar
2 x Pyroblast
3 x Tormod’s crypt
1 x Phyrexian Furnace



Obviously the plan of this deck revolves around disrupting the enemy plan while developing a strong midgame draw engine (drawing 1 – 10 fresh cards per turn) thereby guaranteeing the finisher under the watchful eyes of mighty REB, Abeyance, and Argivian Find.

The draw engine is borrowed from past parfait builds, it has not received modification nor IMO can improvements be made. This draw engine is extremely strong, but has 3 faults; first it is two cards, second they are sorcery speed to cast, finally they are permanents which may be removed.

* Question: In Your Opinion are these flaws fatal to this draw engine?

IMO no… granted this is a two card combination, beneficially they are on the cheap
((W – Land Tax) and (2 – Scroll Rack)). Further, the resolution of a Scroll Rack leads directly to the appearance of one’s first land tax in the next turn at a probability of Approx. 70 - 91% (depending on the number of cards in one’s hand at this point).

Second, only the Land Tax is necessary to achieve victory. With a first turn land, mox, or lotus trash - Land Tax and a Belcher in hand by turn 3, this deck will race to a turn 4 – 5 belch with 0 – 2 lands in the library… mountains.

CARD CHOICES A LA CONTROL

If one is going to commit themselves to the torment and ridicule which goes hand in hand with saying, “Plains, Land Tax, Go” there are at least some easy card choices.

Swords to Plowshares and Seal of Cleansing.
STP: is the most effective and cost effective creature removal spell ever printed. While it sucks giving out receipts for 11 life all day I would rather not lose.
SoC: allows this deck to play spells when opportunity presents itself and save the effect for later. I will am not convinced that the “surprise” factor is worth the loss of tempo that keeping 1W open has upon game progression.

Humility: Do I actually need to explain why this cards effect is so great that we should be happy to bare the 2WW cost? This card shuts off Goblin Welder, Dark Confidant, Trinket Mage, Auriok Salvager, Meddling Mage, Darksteel Colossus, Karn, Worldgorger Dragon, Gorilla Shaman, Akroma, Simic Sky thingy… OMG… so many decks, with so many dead cards, and generally only one out (1 x Echoing Truth or R. River) OMG… Humility. Yet it is spendy and a hefty Drain target…

Abeyance:  This card serves several roles within this system, defensive defense and defensive offense (I thought Rumsfeld retired). This card constitutes the decks primary defensive defense against storm based decks. It has proven particularly effective in early rounds of tournaments before scouting has occurred. Against Blue decks this card is offensive defense, Abeyance resolve? Cast belcher, Land Tax, Scroll Rack, REB, STP, whatever… my spells resolve!

I feel a need to defend this choice due to discussions on Orim’s Chant’s(double possessive) validity on UW fish boards.

   Orim’s Chant is obviously superior against decks that can win before 2 mana is online. I do not choose abeyance over Chant in the main simply for the cantrip. Let us not lose site of the fact that Abeyance has its strengths in the format. It prevents activated abilities. Obviously noone has ever wished for a timewalk against a Mindslaver, Ashen Ghoul, Ichorid, Strip mine, Goblin Welder, Auriok Salvager activation. Not to mention drawing cards is what makes this game fun.

Aura of Silence and Gorilla Shaman: Simply put, I hate getting locked out by Chalice and these provide superior 1 and 3 mana cost removal spells to bolster the SoCs. The added benefits are immediately obvious, Shaman busts up opponent mana bases and annoying crap. Aura of Silence puts stress on mana bases, although more so in previous builds. Again due to changes in my meta, the halving of Stax and Oath builds, and the increase of Storm decks. Again, its presence was definitely felt when its count was at 3 x Aura of Silence.

Lava Dart: This card was a (4 x of) at the last tournament. I have, perhaps in haste, moved it to 3 with the decline of Confidants and Welders in my meta. Again, Confidant, Welder, M. Mage, Gorilla Shaman, Kataki, Ichorid, Ashen Ghoul. These creatures hate this card. I mean would you FOWill or Daze a Lava Dart cast from hand? I cry every time I need to make that decision, a.k.a. it resolves.

Red Elemental Blast: The fact of the matter is that this deck has answers and a win condition and the majority of the field has FOWill, Mana Drain, Daze, and/or Mana Leak. This does not even cover the host of permanents, bounce spells, and general blue icky stickiness like Gifts residing in our format.

Phyrexian Furnace: I catch a lot of heat over this particular card choice. The primary complaint being that the card is too weak in the matches in which it is needed. Ok it is true that this card is inferior to Tormod’s Crypt if all you are looking at is the effect it has on Dredge.Dek. Ok, ok, Yawg’s is in this format as well. But… I know, we all know, that when Will is played in the early or midgame the player dropping that trash has a fixation on 1 or 2 cards in the yard, the rest is just ‘oh so nice’.

As a consummate Furnace pilot I can say with some certainty that Furnace removes the soulless power of Yawg’s if it is dropped 3 turns before the Will. In that time it eats 1 – 2 fetch lands and the brainstorm, which in combination is very powerful. Then you get to target that pesky Recall, Lotus, Timewalk, Tinker, whatever… and draw a card!

*Do you agree with these results? Or have I been the biggest luck sack ever?

Furnace can cause problems for the Dredge.Dek. The last time I played against this match I resolved a Game 1 Turn 1 Furnace right over a Chalice@0. In that game furnace ate, in this order; Grave Troll, nethershadow, nethershadow, Dragons Breath, Dread Return (Sacrificed).


IN THE TRENCHES

All manner of fish: IMO Fish is geared for turns 1 - 5, pouring out fast creatures and lightweight disruption. In today’s meta UW fish is the most popular, with or without vial… Razor cares not. Kataki, Jotun Grunt, and Meddling Mage stream forth supported by Daze, FOW, stifle and freinds.
   Negatives, Unlike Drain decks Fish does not need to have UU untapped to effectively counter 2 times in a single turn without being devastated (2 FOW + 2 U cards is painful). Fish says Daze, FOW. In other words these guys are crazy annoying when trying to resolve early pieces. You cannot get to RW open, cast Land Tax with REB on deck without fear until you see at least 1 counter come out of their hand, and by then it may be too late.
   Positives, Razor packs REB, STP, Lava Dart, Goblin Trenches, Humility, and Belcher maindeck. These cards are effective against all versions of Fish. Against UW there is also the Furnace to help shut down fast Jotun Grunts.

Control Slaver… into the lion’s mouth: I can honestly tell you that I have been slaved 10+ times while piloting this deck and it has hurt 2 times. As long as SoCs are wrecked at target whatevers, and stray little red guys are shot up this storm is easily weatherable… just make sure to kill the Zuran Orb and maybe even remove your own Land Tax!
   Parfait has the answers for this match. I have a great record against competent players, but I have never played or tested against Severance Belcher builds which I could see being a problem.

Stax and UBA: This match I have lost. Since my last stax match I have revised the board to include Sacred Ground which IMO if resolved is nearly an autowin against a deck whose primary strategy is to lock you out of your mana. Again, like slaver matchup kill welders until humility hits, deny the Crucibles, and rejoice in their lack of counter magic.

Bomberman: REB, STP, Abeyance, and Furnace are disruptive in this race, while Humility and Aura of Silence can simply win the match.

Dragon: Um, against 4 STP, 3 SoC, 4 Abeyance, 2 Humility, 2 Furnaces, and 1 Aura of Silence? Dragon should not stand a chance.

Gifts: I have not played a lot of this, even less against skilled pilots as these are few and far between. But I can make a few statements.
REB will be very stressed in this match, the gifts player can throw bomb after bomb at the 3 REBs. It seems to me that a skilled Gifts pilot would probably take the tendrils route automatically as seeing Plains usually means Swords is present. I think it is safe to say that this deck has a fighting chance against a good build, with a good pilot, if it can do one of two things; counter the first Gifts or Ancestral, or set up its draw engine to be online and active entering its 4th turn.

Pitch/Grim long: This deck has severe problems with this style of deck. The main REBs and Abeyances can hurt… if you draw them in 8 cards… if you can cast them on turn 1 - 3… and if they resolve!!! That is a hefty list of ifs, and I hate ifs.

*Does this matchup eliminate the possibility of Parfait entirely? If not, what is the best way to solve this?

The above board includes 4 x Orim’s Chant and 2 x Pyrostatic Pillars bringing the number of answers to this match up to 10 solid answers and 3 disruptive spells (REB) all playable on turn 2.

Does this bring Parfait back from the edge against pitch long?

I hope I have given a clear discussion with proper depth to get you all thinking so you can tell me why this deck sucks so bad.

[Discozombie]

Well if you are lucky Zombieshakespeare will post and share his expertice in the deck.  he was a parfait player for a long time.  We both experimented with many different versions of parfait.  B splash, R splash, RB splash, even a U splash. 
I believe though that the most powerful version of parfait is a very redundant mono white version with a few key enchantments, Humility being among the most powerful.  The problem to is that parfait's draw engine can be a bit fragile, requiring you to be behind on mana sources.  Here is a version I ran once, unpowered, with no artifact XL.  First turn Null Rod, or second turn moat/humilty can be game over for a lot of decks

Budget Bleach

4 Humility
3 Seal of Cleansing
4 Orim's Chant
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Land Tax
4 Null Rod
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Balance
2 Replenish
4 Moat
3 Sacred Mesa
14 Plains
4 Crystal Vein
4 City of Traitors
4 Remote Farm

Sideboard

4 Tormod's Crypt
4 Pithing Needle
4 Supresson Field
2 Replenish
1 Seal of Cleansing

Supression Field is just so brutal.  Bazaar, fetch lands, welder, I actually considered it for the main.

Simple, redundant. 

[mgouthro]

Well, in theory you would seem to have answers to virtually all decks. Unfortunately I never had any experience playing any flavour of Parfait although one of my teammates could probably tell you why it just doesn't have the gas to compete. I'll try to make some observations anyway. It's duly noted that because it's not part of the metagame, there are probably a lot of players who have never seen it before and thus you could be getting a lot of wins via surprise factor.

1. Your prediction and experience with Storm-based decks should be spot on. Maindeck REBs are usually quite terrible against most of them because they don't really rely on a lot of blue spells. I've tested against Storm decks where I did have the REBs and they just were sub-optimal in that matchup.

With regards to Abeyance and Orim's Chant, they are both pretty decent. However, unless you have 2-3 of them in your opening hand, they become less useful. You can't rely on getting three turns to draw one. Also, if you look at how most good storm players play out their hands, you'll notice that they usually send out bait and don't commit everything to one big hurrah. The not-so-good players do that and generally speaking, they end up at the lower tables. That makes hitting the one chance you might have with the Abeyance or Chant sometimes a shot in the dark that you hope will stop them flat. But you already know this isn't a great matchup and I think most people beat this topic to death anyway, more so than they should.

2. Pithing Needle. It completely shuts off your deck, or am I wrong? Sure, you have Seal of Cleansing and a single Shaman. You then have to resolve one of them to get rid of the Needle. Frankly, I find Needles are in a lot of boards, and some decks run them maindeck (IE. Bomberman). Having to wait extra turns to be able to activate Scroll Rack and get some draw online might be ruinous to your game. The opponent could be so far ahead that you would never recover. Not to mention, a second Needle shuts off the Belcher. And a Needle is something that's easily cast on the first turn. Certainly, you could just cast Abeyance then resolve a Seal, but how many cards do you need for all of this? Scroll Rack, Abeyance, Seal, Land Tax. It gets to the point of saying if I had the perfect hand here, I could deal with it. Especially considering you don't have the greatest vintage filter in the deck, otherwise known as Brainstorm, I find sculpting the perfect hand to deal with that to be a bit hard.

To say that Pithing Needle isn't a factor is to disregard the results of decks running Bazaar are having. Look at the various builds of Ichorid and Dragon. Not to mention UbaStax and it's variants. Those are prime examples of why running Pithing Needle is good. If you don't see it, I'd be surprised.

3. What's the fundamental turn of your deck? The point where it's established it's game plan and is in the driver's seat? Is that turn 3-4-5? It doesn't seem fast enough. This seems to be the primary concern. While you do have answers to all decks in there, when do they all come online? If anything, vintage has sped up across the board.

4. Have you actually tested against Dragon or Bomberman? I'll champion those two decks as I'm Canadian! There are a couple of players that run Abeyance themselves. They are pretty heavy on the counterspells lately too, running 4 Force, 4 Drain, and 3 Leaks. In addition, they run Disenchant and Seals in various builds too. Plus a Pithing Needle in some mains, occasionally in the board. They are very heavy on the control side of things.

I can't speak for Dragon as much, I've only played it in a few tournaments, but when it wins, it usually fights through hate pretty well. I've often seen Dragon go off turn 2 and 3 with Duress or Force. I don't know, I'm just seeing you say that it should have any game versus Parfait, but no results?

5. Sacred Ground as the answer to Stax. You know, I thought this should be a cakewalk after resolving Sacred Ground too. I think that against a basic Stax deck, you might be more right. However, it does virtually nothing against UbaStax. I know this because after making it to 5-1 at Gencon World's, I ran into Vroman for the seventh round. He massacred me that round, and I'll admit, I sucked out on that one. Probably should have mulled better knowing what I faced. However, in game two, I thought a Sacred Ground would be good and I landed it like turn 2. It was complete garbage although it allowed my mana base to stick around and be useless. Under both Tangle Wires and Rishadan Ports. I can't say what would be better in the matchup though for this deck.

Overall, I'm of the opinion that it just looks too slow and you have to hope that you have the right answers in hand prior to getting your draw engine online. It's certainly quite good once that happens, I'm sure. It looks like an "Always the Bridesmaid and Never the Bride" type of deck. I'd rather play something that I know has the ability to win it all.

Good luck with it though. Keep on defying the unbelievers (including me!) until you have a win to shove in our face! :lol:

[dicemanx]

Decks like this one suffer from the classic problem - it does you no good if you have a massive number of solutions if most of those solutions are in your library and not your hand (ie - if you don't draw cards or have an aggro plan, expect to win very few games even against decks you think you should beat easily, like WGD). Scroll Rack and Land Tax as a card drawing combo isn't going to be online often enough.

There is only one respectable Parfait deck that I've seen in the past 4 years, and that was Razor's build with 3-4 Blood Moons and 4 Argivian Finds, which also used Goblin Charbelcher as a kill card. Perhaps you started off with that base? If not, you should look it up in the archives.

[Methuselahn]

Stax and UBA: This match I have lost. Since my last stax match I have revised the board to include Sacred Ground which IMO if resolved is nearly an autowin against a deck whose primary strategy is to lock you out of your mana. Again, like slaver matchup kill welders until humility hits, deny the Crucibles, and rejoice in their lack of counter magic.

Stax and UBA have the best counter magic in the game versus you.  It's called "Chalice for One."   I have a hard time believing that you need Sacred Grounds to save all those basics you're already running.

[Demonic Attorney]

Moved to the Vintage Improvement Forum.

[Evol daN]

First off…

THANK YOU to Mana Drain staff… this is a great asset to our community.

Second, thank you to all who posted responses so quickly.



@mgouthro:

ON SURPRISE: I agree when I have played this deck in the past I sit down against an unscouted opponent, see 4 cards (at most) come out of their hand and generally can narrow it down to a deck or two. Thereby no matter what I am playing, I know exactly how to dismantle them. This is not true of many opponents who head into a tournament situation not knowing the history of vintage. How do you beat this deck? How does it win? “Surprise, your dead” – Faith no More

ON NEEDLE: Needle annoys this deck true. I have seen needle many times on both sides of the board. In fact I boarded needle for Bazaar and Belchers when Two Land was running around in my meta.

This deck is a control deck. In my actual tournament experience I have found that in most cases the deck has the answers when it NEEDS them. If my opponent has needle, sure it sucks, but that is not an auto loss. I can still threaten their win condition and resolve one of the 5 artifact removal spells at leisure. The real devastating Needle is on SoC. Further, I do not feel the need to Abeyance for SoC resolution in most cases. If SoC is countered I can cast another answer or it can be the target of Argivian Find.

ON DRIVERS SEAT: Again, only from my experience, this deck is never fully in the drivers seat. Rather it prefers to play backseat driver, always telling you where you can and cannot go via cutting of attempts to win. If you mean, when do I end all my turns with 7 spells in hand and my opponent far less? Then it is totally random. Usually I have the engine online by turn 4 or 5; this is generally when the deck runs out of its opening answers.

ON STORM: If one or two disruptive cards are not enough to stow ToA decks for several turns then we are all forced to play Stax or faster ToA decks.

In my opinion, and I may be dead wrong, it seems very effective to be able to end the storm after they storm five or six spells. It is at this time that I would drop the Abeyance or Chant ‘F-Bomb’. By this time they should have very few cards in hand and will need a recharge or Will, if Necro is in play I will not remove it, this seems to be a good place. However, if they FOW, MisD, or Duress this card away then more conventional control magic i.e. FOW, MDrain, Daze, Etc would also fail.

My point is that if having only 1 -2 chant, countermagic, or P.Pillar effects is not enough to stop ToA in a RW deck, how is it enough in another control deck, where you might see 2 x (Drain, duress, daze, and or FOW)

I am convinced lets all immediately sell our other cards and buy Grim Tutors or Workshops.

I am not trying to sound like an overly vocal jerk, but seriously, ToA can be stopped more easily than most think. Refer to discussions about Vintage broken turns, and how this game IS very interactive, yes i think this includes ToA decks.

BTW, remember, I am also a disbeliever in parfait i just do not know why... lolz

and you do not need to be Canadian win some rounds with Bomberman(zZzZUnIbomBerZzZz).



@ Dicemanx:

You may be right about the “34 answers but only 4 cards in hand” thing. But IMO this applies to nearly all ‘control’ decks. Most ‘control’ decks are running eight countermagic cards and one bounce spell. This is efficient as countermagic hates out nearly all decks equally. This is where I really feel mgouthr’s point about Bstorm. Sculpting is good. However, do you believe that play style and board position manipulation plays a large part of control mirrors? I do.

For instance when I pilot Bomberman in a Drain mirror I accept responcibility to play aggressively. I drop the turn 1 or 2 Meddling Mage, followed by Trinket Mage, etc. forcing them to play a certain way, i.e. putting the weight of finding answers on their shoulders. I think parfait can also do this, but rather than control into aggro it makes the control into combo transformation, but only in style of play.

Second, remember this deck play very little land often a kept hand has one or two mana, and another is seen every 3 turns or so. So, Parfait’s opening hand has four or five hate spells, one or two mana, and one or two engine/win pieces. On turn five you have twelve cards they should probabilistically break down like this…

2 or 3 mana cards, but up to 9 depending on Land Tax
2 or 3 engine/win condition
6 to 8 control cards

Now if a Scroll Rack resolves early, win conditions can be traded for hate cards off the top. If Land Tax resolves early then less lands are drawn in the subsequent turns, hence you draw even more hate. If both of these pieces land early then the engine is online.

I present a discussion of the Parfait draw engine… does your lack of approval stem from one of the three reasons I already stated, or another?

Further just below this discussion I actually present an argument about how the two pieces behave separate from each other and some numbers, which are conservative. How do you respond to this argument? Which parts of my argument are valid and which do you attack?



@Methuselahn:

First you may be correct regarding the Sacred Ground against Uba. But, the last time I checked Ubastax ran 4 x Smoke Stack, 1 or 2 x sundering titan, and 1 x strip mine with the bazaar engine to find these. And I feel that 5 color Stax has enough ways to find the strip mine not to mention the 4 x SStack, 1 or 2 x Titan. Further remember that titan can hit over and over, but preferably only 2 times, as it is cast, and as they gain 7 life.

Personally I prefer to have mana to cast spells. Sacred Ground > most other board cards.

However, you may be right about the Chalice@1. After all that does shut off most of the answers I need against welders. But the Stax player that drops a Chalice@1, without dropping the Chalice@2 immediately after deserves a loss. I have far more important business @2mana, especially against Stax. SoC and the better half of my draw engine, Scroll Rack. It appears to me that Stax in any form is a prison deck with very few win conditions. They lock you in with mana denial and play 1 of their 3 or 4 threats only after they are comfortable. How could they feel comfortable when 4/5 of my answers to Chalice are not @1 mana. That only shuts off the Shaman. Second, these same 4/5 are answers for their win conditions.

But here is a good question. Does this deck need to hate the yard as strongly as this board does. After boarding this deck packs 3 T Crypt and 3 P Furnace. This deck plays other great cards against the dread deck. It runs 4 x Abeyance(keeps the beats in the yard), 3 x Lava Dart, 4 x STP, 2 x Humility, and 4 x kickered Chants to keep dread off its back.

I ask this because if space could be found, I think that Meltdown could return to the board as a (2 or 3 x) answer to Chalice@whatever, Rods, Affinity, Etc. This was my previous answer to Stax, and would be great in addition to sacred ground.

If this were the case could burning wish return to the main giving access to Balance and Tariff off the board?



@ ALL

Keep it coming

[Methuselahn]

I'm only going to touch on a few things, even though there are seemingly limitless things to go over here. 

Your draw engine.  Scroll Rack and Land Tax is a slow draw engine.  You need to have a 2 card combo already resolved to take advantage of it.  Not good.   Instant speed draw that conventional blue uses is good because it finds the broken plays, it lets you sculpt, and keeps you flexible.  With little to no draw cards, you are forced to react to your opponent by the luck of the topdeck.  This is a recipe for disaster.

So your deck is a control deck.  But it doesn't have the ability to say "no."  This is a problem.  It's much easier to just counter a spell on the stack than it is to find the correct solution and resolve it.  Blue is the catch-all color.  Blue counter does a better job of what a control deck wants to do.

I have to applaud your tenacity.  Understand that the majority is going to be against you though.  Blue control decks have been winning tournaments left and right, but White control hasn't in a LOONG time.

I haven't tested the Stax vs. White matchup, I gotta be honest.  But with so many basics AND Land Tax itself, I'd have to still wonder why you need Sacred Ground.  Seems to me that you'd get more use out of more actual artifact destruction.

[dicemanx]

You may be right about the “34 answers but only 4 cards in hand” thing. But IMO this applies to nearly all ‘control’ decks. Most ‘control’ decks are running eight countermagic cards and one bounce spell. This is efficient as countermagic hates out nearly all decks equally. This is where I really feel mgouthr’s point about Bstorm. Sculpting is good. However, do you believe that play style and board position manipulation plays a large part of control mirrors? I do.

As a control deck, you're at a disadvantage vs a more traditional Drain control archetype in that you cannot so easily assume a beatdown role. Your "34 answers" do not address the same threat - you need to be careful in drawing appropriate answers for the right threats. For instance, those Darts and StPs are pretty much dead draws vs control decks (not to mention the Charbelchers or Humilities, and even the Seals and Argivian Finds could be whiffing if all you can target are Moxes), your Land Tax is conditional, and your Scroll Rack might not get to search deep enough if you don't have a means of shuffling. Parfait's strategy was much more feasible when the premier control deck was Keeper, because the extent of Keeper's "aggression" was to build card advantage and draw into its answers. Parfait could match that in the long term, but its far more difficult to scamble for your Abeyances, REBs, and StPs in the short term when a deck like Gifts or CS assumes the beatdown role and tries to combo you out.

You will be successful some of the time, but just not consistently enough. I come from a meta where Razor (Ray Mitchell) played, and I got a chance to play against Parfait or watch it enough times in tourney play to understand how it ticks and what its strengths and weaknesses are.

For instance when I pilot Bomberman in a Drain mirror I accept responcibility to play aggressively. I drop the turn 1 or 2 Meddling Mage, followed by Trinket Mage, etc. forcing them to play a certain way, i.e. putting the weight of finding answers on their shoulders. I think parfait can also do this, but rather than control into aggro it makes the control into combo transformation, but only in style of play.

This is why I think the omission of Blood Moon is a serious one. Blood Moon is a significant virtual card advantage card and a bonafide threat against many archetypes, even if its used to just cut off one color. It's also a card that you can threaten with directly (aside from Scroll Rack) rather than keep your grip and hope you have just enough answers in hand for what your opponent plans to do.

Second, remember this deck play very little land often a kept hand has one or two mana, and another is seen every 3 turns or so. So, Parfait’s opening hand has four or five hate spells, one or two mana, and one or two engine/win pieces. On turn five you have twelve cards they should probabilistically break down like this…

Running few mana sources can be detrimental in that you might be bottlenecking yourself and not give yourself a chance to respond adequately to your opponent's aggressive play. You also have a fairly heavy dependency on Land Tax to enable you to find your red mana so that you can have REB available for disruption. Reliance on your draw phase in the event that your Tax/Rack engine isn't online is a losing proposition against control decks that can and will outdraw you 2:1, quickly negating and overcoming your advantage of a better threat:mana source ratio.

Now if a Scroll Rack resolves early, win conditions can be traded for hate cards off the top. If Land Tax resolves early then less lands are drawn in the subsequent turns, hence you draw even more hate. If both of these pieces land early then the engine is online.

Yes, if your Land Tax goes active, or if Rack resolves, you increase your threat density with your draw phase. You will on average still lag behind though because you're only going to see one extra card a turn, and you have plenty of highly conditional cards in the deck. Even then it's not so simple - your Tax might not net you anything, and even if it does the gains are not immediate - you are relying on improved ratios via drawing one card in your draw phase.

Still, I wouldn't be replying if I didn't think there wasn't potential for this archetype. I was actually hoping someone might give Parfait again, because more archetypes in the meta are always welcome. I only hope that we might see a similar resurgence in other "lost" archetypes such as Landstill or MUD, which I'm convinced can be competitive today.

To restate my opinion from my earlier post, I believe that you should be running 2 critical components:

3-4 Blood moons
a full set of Argivian Finds

This in my opinion was the key in making Parfait a respectable contender when Ray debuted his build. The Finds are key in getting your Moons, Tax, or Rack to stick, or to recur Seals.

Here is the skeleton I would start with when constructing modern Parfait:

4 Land Tax
4 Scroll Rack
3 Blood Moon
2 Humility
2 Goblin Charbelcher

4 Red Elemental Blast
3 Seal of Cleansing
1 Aura of Silence
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Lava Dart
4 Abeyance

4 Argivian Find
1 Enlightened Tutor



1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Diamond
2 Mountain
1 Plateau
13 Plains


Whatever you decide to do, I hope you can make this deck work!

[Thegreatgonzo]

I had 2 problems while attempting to build a parfait deck : first, i wanted null rod, but null rod shuts down scroll rack. Second : (as already stated) you can't say NO.

Every time i tried to build a parfait deck, i ended up running u/w fish. FOW and meddling mages are just too good to cut. Anyway, I hope you'll be more inspired than i was, because land tax (like mongrel, and strongly i believe there is something to do with these two monsters) is one of my favorite magic card.

The good thing about land tax is having 3 more cards in hand. Especially if you find a way to abuse those cards. ( Bazaar, scroll rack, mongrel...even good old land's edge )
the bad thing about land tax is that it stresses your mana base a lot (you have to play with a threshold number of basic-non islands- lands). Plain (or plain, land tax) go, scares me less than island, go.
Anyway, land tax is still, in my opinion, a good reason to play parfait. But i think parfait needs a splash. Blue is great (brainstorm + land tax trigger -> pownage), but blue means 20 cards. So that's another deck.
Green is a option. Mongrel have a good synergy with land tax, ray of revelation matches the colors, fastbond is huge, etc... But then, once again, that's not parfait anymore.

All these words to say that land tax is extremely broken, and sould be the main focus of any decks packing 4 of them. Good luck with your deck building, please prove us that T1 magic is not only about blue and black 

[meadbert]

So why not run a full set of moxen?

You want to Land Tax all the lands out of your deck as fast as possible.  Also, moxen help you power out faster Scroll Racks, Belchers and Humilities.

For budget reasons I understand, but it seems to me that a full set of moxes are important.

Is it maintaining a high enough white color count that makes the difference?

In my friend, Dave's,  mono white build he runs 11 Plains, 0 Petal and 0 Diamond.  This runs 4 extra white mana sources.  This runs +2 Plains, +1 Taiga, +1 Petal and +1 Diamond for 5 extra mana sources.  Maybe Dave is a little land light, but an extra 5 white sources are probably unneeded.

[zeus-online]

The good thing about land tax is having 3 more cards in hand. Especially if you find a way to abuse those cards. ( Bazaar, scroll rack, mongrel...even good old land's edge )

Hmm that got me thinking...have you tried a few bazaars in the deck? That would really help you filtering away dead answers and land tax'ed basics.

/Zeus

[meadbert]

I tried Bazaars and it did not work out too well.  Here is why.  Bazaar is somewhat conditional in that you want an active Land Tax in order to abuse it.  (Replenish and Argivian Find also can abuse it)

Anyway in order for Land Tax to remain active you must have fewer lands in play than your opponent.  Since one of your lands is Bazaar this means you have 2 fewer mana available.  The tempo lost by being forced to operate with 2 fewer mana is very annoying.

I tried abusing Bazaar with Replenish but I had the same problem.  How do I get 4 mana up and have Bazaar out while my opponent has more land.  In the end I cut Land Tax and started playing Squees and then I ended up with Leviat.dec.

The second reason Bazaar is suboptimal is Belcher wants no lands in deck.  Land Tax cannot filter out your Bazaars so this does not work so well.  Scroll Rack ends up being much better than Bazaar.

Remember Scroll racks digs 2 deeper each turn if you do not play a card.  You should always hold on to your answers and moxen as long as possible so you can dig as deep as possible.  The exception is Seal of Cleansing versus Stax.  Chalice@2 is annoying so you want to play your Seal before Chalice@2 rears its ugly head.  Oath plays Chalice also but Chalice@2 is rarely an optimal move for Oath.

Belchers:
  Dave used to run 4 Belchers but we have recently discovered this was wrong.  We have known for a while that you only need 2-3 to get one when you need it which is generally somewhat late in the game.  A mid game Belcher can help with Aggro and for removing Welders but even then 3 is enough to see it in the mid game.  Dave's reasoning for running so many was that they might all get countered or Duressed.  When we ran 2 this happened a lot.  He then went to 3 and eventually 4.  Ultimately we determined that the best solution was to play a full set of Argivian Finds (just as Dicemanx suggested) and in this manner we can protect our draw engine and get back a countered Belcher.  Generally it is best to hold back Belcher till you are ready to win with it.  Tapping out is dangerous.  Ideally you want sit with Abeyance in your hand to prevent a massive Will.  Then when you have 7 mana you can go for it with Belcher.  Also wait with your Scroll Rack activations.  It is not uncommon for an opponent to play Will.  You Abeyance in response.  Your opponent Forces.  Now you activate Scroll Rack to look at 5-6 more cards hoping one is Abeyance/Orim's Chant.

[Roat17]

Regarding your comment on Bazaar.

Bazaar and Rack cost the same if you want them active every turn.  Since you need to tap one mana for the rack, it essentially the same as bazaar.  I am not warranting the inclusion of bazaar, merely stating that the cost would be the same, as I don't see you ever wanting to keep the 3 plains you just drew.

[meadbert]

You raise a good point, but Scroll Rack still offers more flexibility.  The reason is because you do not have to activate Scroll Rack every turn.  You can simply amass 6 Plains over 2 turns and then activate every other turn.  In the mean time you can tap your plains for mana.  Bazaar does not give you this option without Riftstone Portal in the yard.  With 2 plains out you can hapily Land Tax and still play Seal of Cleansing and most of your other spells when you draw them if you want to.  With a Bazaar and a Plains you are locked out of playing Seal, Abeyance and other 2 cc spells.

[Evol daN]

Posting here is more fun than watching Borat locked in a room with shapeshifting Texan gypsies.

But let us all just remember that we want know why this deck sucks!!!! Not how it could be better… lolz. Kidding… keep it up all!




Bowes Humbly at applause from Methuselahn and dicemanx, but raises with nose thumbed.

@Methuselahn:

I can agree with you the draw engine is slow, I declared that in my original post… this is a mid game draw engine. I realize quite well that I cannot say no to many spells, it is for this reason that this is a different kind of control deck, and thereby redefines what midgame is even to the point of redefining the opponents midgame.

Both you and I know that Draining a Thirst against slaver, a Gifts against Gifts, or a Crucible against a welderless Stax is amazing. We untap and cast some dumb stuff with that Drain mana. I would wager that at least 85% of TMD community knows that countering card advantage spells is good. This is how Blue decks stretch the game out.

I may be wrong but, viewing the ability to draw more cards as winning is very similar to viewing a mail order catalogue as an effective way to get a life mate.

Mail order catalogues give you great choices of international mates but I think we all know it is not the same thing as bumping into someone special at work, school, or on the street.

Similarly, drawing 5 cards does not equal (Tinker DSC, FOW, Timewalk, Timewalk) very often. I agree that playing cards like Thirst, Gifts, Necro, AK, and Intuition is great and is an effective ways to increase cards in hand and get to win conditions.

Here is a more general question for the community. What win conditions are decks playing, and how many conditions per pile?

Tell me if this is not accurate…
Gifts:          2    (DSC, Tendrils, Belcher)
Pitch/Grim Long:    2    (Tendrils, Burning Wish, DSC)
UbaStax:        4 or 5    (7/10, Karn, Dup, Sol. Simmy)
Stax:          4 or 5    (7/10, Karn, Triskelavus, Dup)
Bomberman:       3 – 10    (Salvager, MMage, TMage, DSC)
Dragon:       5 ench.   (Laquatus, Hellkite, Animate Dead, Necromancy, Dance)
Slaver:       3 or 4    (DSC, Slaver, Trike, belcher)

I just want this information present as we talk about finding win conditions or finding answers to win conditions. Generally in my experience decks will spend 2 or 3 turns trying to navigate into sufficient numbers of these conditions (in the case of the prisons and Bomberman far longer).

Decks winning with beat sticks, no matter how huge, need an additional 1 or 2 turns to actually take opponents to 0 life. Blue decks spend this time scrambling for; their own faster win (generally a 1 or 2 x), the lone bounce spell, or their copy of 11/11 to block. (BTW I realize many are going away from 11/11 right now… but IMO he will phase in and out until tinker is banned, hopefully never)

This is my point; I see very little actual difference between using FOW with Wipe away as backup, and using STP with REB and Abeyance as back up.

You might say Thirst, Gifts, and Brainstorm help get FOW to hand at appropriate times, and FOW is more flexible. Sure, especially if your goal is to stop the win condition before it resolves.

As I suggest above, there is time between when something resolves and when you lose, as in the case of creatures and Mindslaver, this is when Parfait needs to act. ToA requires space of its own.

Sure I cannot FOW, Drain, Daze, or whatever whatever, target Tinker, Karn, 7/10 on the stack but I get time to Plow that trash, generally 2 turns to find Plow and the backup. Sure if I fall victim to EOT Gifts (tinker, walk, recoup, will) I am going to lose, but not many would win at that point.

We both know that frequent card drawing results in some combination of these 4 things in the average Drain archetype.
1.   getting a busted win condition like Tinker whatever
2.   getting more spells to draw cards.
3.   getting counter magic.
4.   getting a load of mana sources, allowing us to continue to draw while playing the above results.

These can skew, and do so quite naturally. Just an example… how many Brainstorms result in 2 mana sources and a draw spell when its caster wants to liquidate mana sources?

In my experience piloting Drain archetypes, I find that in an average length game (6 to 8 turns each) I see three or four ‘On The Stack’ control elements. Despite constant disagreement I MAINTAIN that Parfait can show enough threats to keep up with the counter magic, and even diminish Drain type draw engines… via pitching to FOW, and still have the necessary STP lock out the win. This is especially the case if Blood moon is added.

ON ToA: I admit that game 1 Parfait has little chance of victory I guess about one in four games, but I notice no one has talked about this point even though I stressed it as a question about Parfait’s viability.

Neither has anyone commented on whether the decks needs so much hate against the yard.




@dicemanx:

I agree strong your teaching about the make glory wonderful card BLOOD MOON. I totally forgot about this card which is odd considering I just ran it in a Board last month! You suggest 3 or 4. I believe the deck could stomach 3.

I disagree strongly with the need to run 4 argivian finds. It has been my experience that you want to see one in Parfait’s midgame around turn 4, that is when you have played you stuff and want to regrow a failed spell or reuse an effect. For this reason I cut them to three x, and in this most recent build went to two, I may have been wrong!

ON REB: as I stated above I believe that Parfait is a control deck, with a Prison attitude. The REB is generally not needed until the opponent has landed an 11/11 or is storming and you need to stop the FOW which is stopping your appropriate hoser. I wish more red could go in… but it destabilizes the deck, I do not even want two mountains.

ON SoC: you are correct that this is a dead card against MOST Drain decks. I find it great against Slaver, Bomberman, and anything I know will bring in Needle. Otherwise I usually board out 2 for more appropriate hate cards. This leaves 1 x SoC, 1 x Aura, and 1 x Shaman for the surprises and to eat Sapphires and sol rings.

I also find it very interesting that you do not auto add Balance or Burning wish.




@ meatbert:

ON BAZAAR: I must agree that bazaar in this deck would greatly confuse Parfait’s win condition. Land Tax is not just ½ a draw engine it is a part of the win condition. I can live with needling my own belcher on occasion if needed, but you are sooo right about in essence ‘needling’ the Land Tax with a set of bazaars.

ON SCRACK: Yes, Scroll Rack is abnormally broken when your opponent is not attempting to storm out or put down fat beats. In other words, the dig 2 deeper, at minimum, each turn is amazing.

ON BELCHERS: The only reason to play more than 2 – 3 belchers is to deny the near auto loss to Jesters Cap. We are agreed that 4 chokes the hand, 3 can get annoying but that allows them to bait counter magic.

ON MOXEN: I choose to play on color Moxen only to minimize dead opening mana draws. This is what precipitated the removal of 1 x Basic Mountain for a Plateau. I found I was getting to many opening hands with red mana and white spells. I want to make the mana/spells ratio as small as possible, while maintaining reliability. The above suggested build actually has 2 more mana sources in it than I ran at the last few tournaments.

I found I was getting locked out about 40% of my Diamond draws. In other words, I would resolve Mox Diamond and not see another land for 3 turns. Nearly every other draw was stable with an approximate 1 in 5 Paris ratio.

Did I make the wrong change in the mana base? Should I have simply replaced Diamond with the lotus petal and added one land rather than cut 2 spells for Petal and plains #12?

I will probably post a revised list soon.

May I ask the proper way to add quotes to my post… both from this and from other threads,

BTW does anyone here actually like cherry flavor on their ice cream?

[meadbert]

Regarding fast beats:  I noticed Balance is missing from your original list.  Balance is pretty much the best card you can run.  You run no creatures so it is a one sided Wrath of God.  You can Balance with Plains in your hand after Land Taxing so you jump start your mana base faster.  The big draw back is losing your hand.

Scroll Rack is the most important card in the deck.  It is truly annoying to play against with Combo.  You can just keep an Abeyance in the top X cards of your library and wait for Yawg Will.  Then you can Scroll Rack and Abeyance in Response.  Duress can't get rid of it.  For old School Grim Long, Xantid Swarm becomes very important (and very easy to remove with 5 creature removal spells.)  Long has the advantage for sure but if you know how to play the matchup and your opponent does not then you can win this frequently.

I have not tested versus Pitch Long, but I image the Force of Wills help Long a lot.

Dave's mono white list has Isochron Scepter.  Is this a mistake?  Scepter is incredible in many matchups.  Scepter Chant versus the original SS with only 1 bounce was amazing.  Scepter Chant can lock Uba Stax out of a game unless they have an Welder or Smokestack in play.  Scepter->Abeyance draws an extra card a turn and either locks your opponent out of Sorceries or protects your spells from counter magic.  Scepter->Disenchant wins versus Stax and Oath.  Scepter->Swords usually wins versus Oath and Aggro.  Scepter->Argivian Find is also good.  The problem is Welder.  A Scepter in the yard can be pretty bad if your opponent can just keep Welding in and out Scepters.

I have played the mono white parfait /Uba Stax matchup extensively.  Sacred Ground is not that good.  It is good.  It is better than Seal of Cleansing against Uba Stax.  It is not enough better to be a great sideboard card.  I could see putting 1 in the sideboard.  What you need to beat Uba Stax are Seal of Cleansing, Disenchant and Abolish.  Then you can destroy the threatening Artifacts instead of using Sacred Ground.  Abolish is important to get around Chalice@2 which can be very annoying.  (Remember Scroll rack is your best card)  Also Null Rod hoses you hence all the Disenchants.

[Evol daN]

-19 MANA
12 x Plains
  1 x Plateau
  2 x Mountains
  1 x Mox Pearl
  1 x Mox Ruby
  1 x Black Lotus
  1 x Lotus Petal
16W, 6R

-19 INSTANTS
4 x Swords to Plowshares
1 x Orim’s Chant
3 x Argivian Find
1 x Enlightened Tutor
3 x Lava Dart
3 x Red Elemental Blast
4 x Abeyance
(11W, 6R)

-11 Enchantments
4 x Land Tax
2 x Seal of Cleansing
2 x Blood Moon
1 x Aura of Silence
2 x Goblin Trenches
1 x Humility
(14W, 1R)

-1 Sorcery
1 x Burning Wish

- 8 ARTIFACTS     
2 x Phyrexian Furnace       
4 x Scroll Rack
2 x Goblin Charbelcher

- 1 CREATURE
1 x Gorilla Shaman

SIDE BOARD
3 x Sacred Ground
2 x Orim’s Chant
2 x Pyrostatic Pillar
3 x Tormod’s crypt
2 x Meltdown
3 x Pyroclasm


The changes to the overall design reflect a combination of the card choices discussed as well as a small amount of further testing. The addition of 1 x Orim’s Chant in the main is manifest of the strategy that this deck desires to employ. That is, to be a control deck, that does not say no to spells on the stack, but rather desires to say no to losing. This is accomplished by…

1.   Saying no to Collossus swinging 2 times.
    a.   Forcing at least 1 counter out of the opponents hand early with spells like Bloom Moon, Scroll Rack, Land Tax, etc.
    b.   So that you may resolve STP or Humility via, Abeyance, Chant, REB

2.   Saying no to storm 9 plus ToA.
    a.   Resolving Pyrostatic Pillar with REB in hand… or
    b.   Resolving Abeyance or Orim’s Chant when storm count is high and they appear vulnerable. This strategy should buy time to find another answer.

3.   Keeping the fish off your back.
    a.   Dart the small guys, send the big ones (Plowing – farming) whatever.
    b.   Landing Humility.
    c.   Landing Goblin Trenches.

4.   Keeping your mana base healthy against Stax.
    a.   Using SoC and Aura with Argivian find.
    b.   Keeping Welder off the table with Darts and Plows
    c.   SB in the Sacred Grounds

IMO the main problem with this deck is the Seal of Cleansings. As dicemanx said earlier these cards are dead in the control match, the most they can do is kill Sol Ring or Sapphire, and as such the numbers should be limited. But there is so little room on the board and you definitely want 5 – 6 artifact removal spells vs Stax, but with the needs against Long decks the slots do not appear to be there. Opinions on my board construction... please!

also... and this may sound crazy but i have been trying balance in here and it just does not seem that good against anything but fish... opinions on that?

[meadbert]

With parfait you have to accept that your opponents will be playing more powerful decks.  The way you beat them is with random hosers.  Scroll rack lets you see a ton of cards so you have a higher probabilty of seeing your random hosers.

Regarding Sacred Ground:  My test partner Dave loves them because I play a lot of decks with Life from the Loam/Strip recursion.  In general Sacred Ground is just much worse than Seal of Cleansing.  Stax is one matchup where you can fight on equal footing because you can run so many artifact removal spells.  Just use Disenchant/Seal of Cleansing/Abolish to destroy your opponent's Crucibles and Smokestacks and you won't need Sacred Grount.  Even Crucible is not threatening until you see Strip Mine because you have so many Basics.

Is Seal of Cleansing good?  One year ago it was amazing in Parfait.  The meta's top decks at that time were Stax, Flamevault Gifts, Oath and Slaver was on its way back up.

Seal is great versus Stax and Solid versus Slaver.  It was actually very effective versus Flamevault Gifts because it shut down the Flamevault Combo.  Obviously Seal is amazing versus Oath and Dragon.

Anyway with the errata of Flamevault Seal of Cleansing became pretty useless versus Gifts and this is its problem.  I still support playing several because you are essentially looking for random hosers in each matchup.  Just hope to get an Abeyance or Orim's in time to stop Tendrils and if you run 4 Swords and Balance stopping DSC should not be too hard.  Humility and Moat help too.

You should have 8 Orim's/Abeyance post board.  I have tried True Believer and Children of the Korliss and they are somewhat narrow.  They might belong in the board though.

Regarding Balance.  My friend Dave runs Zuron Orb so he can do things like Sac all Plains to Zuron Orb and then Balance becomes a one sided Armageddon + Wrath of God for 2 Mana.  For him it rivals Scroll Rack as the best card in the deck.  Even if it is somewhat worse for you Balance should be amazing in general.  In almost every matchup but Dragon and Long Balance is amazing.

As long as you are running so many Enchantments you might want to test Replenish.

[OfficeShredder]

Regarding Balance.  My friend Dave runs Zuron Orb so he can do things like Sac all Plains to Zuron Orb and then Balance becomes a one sided Armageddon + Wrath of God for 2 Mana.  For him it rivals Scroll Rack as the best card in the deck.  Even if it is somewhat worse for you Balance should be amazing in general.  In almost every matchup but Dragon and Long Balance is amazing.

It's not really a one sided armageddon if you lose all your lands too.  You need a crucible of worlds also to make it effective

[meadbert]

The idea is too pull this off with Land Tax in play.  This way as soon as your opponent drops a land you get 3.  Or if you have already Land Taxed then you might already have a few lands in your hand.

The risk is that if you have Land Taxed you probably have the larger hand and so you are forced to Discard.

Also, the life you gain from Zuron Orb  can make a difference.

What about Sensei's Divining Top in Parfait.  I have never tried it but it seems to have some synergy with Land Tax and Goblin Charbelcher.  Also just the fact that Parfait relies on random hosers means that looking 3 deep could be a big deal.  Has anyone tried Top in Parfait?

[rgbeatskeeper]

Ok 1st off I love this deck, the ONLY problem I see is not having a good win condtion, I ran Charbelcher in mine with main deck blood moons 4 deuls, being my mountains, with the engine you can stack your deck. This didnt work all the time so yeah. I would love to play it if there was like a white morphling or something.

[wethepeople]

Ok 1st off I love this deck, the ONLY problem I see is not having a good win condtion, I ran Charbelcher in mine with main deck blood moons 4 deuls, being my mountains, with the engine you can stack your deck. This didnt work all the time so yeah. I would love to play it if there was like a white morphling or something.

There's a red one, Torchling, from Planar Chaos.

[rgbeatskeeper]

Yeah I know but he is quite awful. Well I dunno maybe if he could fly instead of trample cause thats not really too good.

[meadbert]

Belcher should be great in this deck.  The idea is to play only basics.  Then Land Tax out all of your lands, play Belcher, activate and do lethal damage right there.

I toyed with 1 Blood Moon and 1 Mountain and that did not work out.  I could try more Mountains, but I would almost always rather have a mox or Plains in my opponening hand.  Blood Moon is dead with no Mountain.  Eventually I dropped both for Aura of Silence.  Aura of Silence is useful in almost every matchup.  It is of course great versus Enchantment or Artifact based decks like Dragon, Oath and Stacks.  It is hurts Yawg Will based decks like Gifts, Slaver and to a lesser extent Long.  It is also useful against Fish since Fish has a potent weapon in Null Rod that Aura of Silence stops.


Blood Moon does just randomly win games that Aura does not though.  I would love Blood Moon if it were only white. 

[wethepeople]

Aura of Silence seems strong in so many situations, because at the least, it works as a 3-CC Seal of Cleansing.

Aura is a 2x Sphere of Resistance versus Stax, Dragon, etc, and it is sure to slow down Storm-based decks because so many of them rely on multiple aritfacts to generate a lethal Storm count.

Although, I have never played Parfait, and am positive that I never will, so this all goes without any testing what so ever.

[rgbeatskeeper]

The deck needs a win condtion pure and simple, a friend said to use the red akroma, cause well she can't be stped or bonced/taped by blue spells, feel free to try her out I'm sure if she hits that would be the GG though.

[Scott_Limoges]

Chalice or Null Rod are effective at slowing the opponent down so you can get yours online.

[meadbert]

Scroll Rack is the heart of your deck so Null Rod is usually bad. It is a chief concern of mine when I play Parfait.  Chalice can be good for slowing down an opponent and if forces an opponent to play more lands so you can Land Tax.  The only trouble in the builds I play is that I run a full set of Moxen and I do not like cutting them off.  In this build which is mox light Chalice could be very good.