[Deck] Charmer

[netherspirit]

Hey all! I've been building this along side my Null Profusion deck as I've found that I just can't work on only one deck at a time. If I work on two I often think of things for the one whilst working on the other.

The deck itself is focused around Funeral Charm and Piracy Charm; you may now think I'm a moron, however, don't stop reading! These two cards are brilliant when used correctly.

The idea of this deck is to disrupt your opponent as much as possible via early game discards or counters and mid to late game constant discard.

Anyways, here's the deck!

Mana Base:
1 Black Lotus
5 Moxen
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
4 Underground Sea
2 Island
2 Swamp
3 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 LoA

Critters:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Dimir Cutpurse

Discard:
4 Funeral Charm
4 Piracy Charm
4 Duress
3 Extirpate

Permission:
4 Force of Will

Draw/Tutor:
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Brainstorm

Board Control:
1 Wipe Away
1 Echoing Truth

Random:
1 Time Walk

Well that's the deck! Card explanations:

Strip Mine/Wasteland: The deck wants to disrupt as early as possible, so using these can ensure early disruption and make sure my opponent can't develop too far ahead of me.

Dimir Cutpurse: Works brilliantly with the Charms! Allows consistent disruption and additional draws.

Funeral Charm/Piracy Charm: Instant speed discard that's available turn one. :shock: Even if my opponent gets to choose which card they lose; these mean I'm bringing them down bit by bit, and as I can usually hit with discard spells and counters every turn for the first 3 or 4 turns these are particularly nasty. The landwalk abilities are just plain awesome with Dimir Cutpurse as Islands and Swamps are so commonly played in the format (including dual lands, obviously). The pump ability is also handy as spot removal or to aid a finishing blow.

Extirpate: Brilliant with all the discard! It allows me to remove pesky cards such as Force of Will with much ease.

Wipe Away: Uncounterable bounce. Seems worthy of a spot. Helps get around Chalice@1 (or @2 if they know about Echoing Truth).

Echoing Truth: Goes well along side Wipe Away.



I'm considering replacing LoA with another Island as by time I have 7 cards in hand I am often about to win anyway.

The deck works by hitting with discard spells and FoW as much as possible turns 1-4 while dropping Confidants and Cutpurses. From then you aim to beat as much as possible while further disrupting them and gaining as much card advantage as possible through Confidants.

The deck plays in a similar way to SS and in some ways Fish, but is, in my opinion, much more fun and often more reliable than SS.

Anyways, that's it! Thoughts, comments and suggestions are more than welcome and would be much appreciated!

  netherspirit

[rgbeatskeeper]

I dont like Dimir Cutpurse at all, if your going that route i would sudjest maybe finkel? Also, how do you win? I dont see those 8 dudes taking you all the way.

[netherspirit]

They've worked so far! What would you suggest as better? I really don't want to go down the Tendrils route which I know someone will suggest at some point (I swear that's the only kill condition I hear these days! ) Finkel could be very good though.

Maybe Tinker --> DSC would be worth testing? Any thoughts on that?

[rgbeatskeeper]

Sure go nuts DSC is always good. Maybe Jesus? Go old school control, or even the stick may be worth checking out depending what you can imprint on it.

[Anusien]

Since the charms only take the worst card out of their hand, wouldn't things like Blackmail and Cabal Therapy be much much better?

Why Extirpate, what are your targets?  In a deck very low on good cards to force through if you take counters or few ways to complement the strategy, isn't Crypt 100x better?

[rgbeatskeeper]

Why Extirpate, what are your targets?  In a deck very low on good cards to force through if you take counters or few ways to complement the strategy, isn't Crypt 100x better?

Crypt is a one time deal, where as if say I would make you discard a force of will or a welder, I can RFG all of them from the game.

[netherspirit]

Since the charms only take the worst card out of their hand, wouldn't things like Blackmail and Cabal Therapy be much much better?

Why Extirpate, what are your targets?  In a deck very low on good cards to force through if you take counters or few ways to complement the strategy, isn't Crypt 100x better?

Therapy just doesn't help in the same way though. The charms have three purposes and a guaranteed discard; whereas Therapy has a chance of discarding. Blackmail looks quite useful though.

Extirpate is useful because it allows me to strip any threats or counters straight out of their deck if I can make them discard one first.

[wethepeople]

What did you cut from the standard SS list to make room for the Charms? I see that there is no longer Erayo, Soratami Ascendant, which is a very poor move since it flips so consistently in SS, and when it does, it most commonly is the equivalent to "gg."

[TopSecret]

     If you want to put an opponent in topdeck mode to abuse the charms,
which I am assuming, I would suggest running Erayo.
     It can make a pretty nifty soft lock, without always relying on Cutpurse.

     If you are just looking for general disruption from the charms,
then Therapy, Blackmail, or Hymn to Tourach may be better.
It looks like you have enough disruption to force through a Hymn.

     Also, if you added both Hymn and Ritual,
it could make for some amusing first turn plays.

[Outlaw]

The problem with having discard at your opponents choice is they will chose cards that want to be in the yard.  If you hit them and they have a welder, they will drop any of the huge robots in their hand, dragon can infact just drop one of their dragons and go off.  You give ichorid their engine going and any deck running deep analysis will thank you.  I just dont see having discard at opponents leisure to be any better than cabal therapy?

[rgbeatskeeper]

You can respond to thw welder or dragon going off with Extirpate cant you? I thought it was an instant, if you hit dragon with it, Im pretty sure the dragon player cant win, and if you hit the slaver in drain slaver they can't lock you.

[wethepeople]

You can respond to thw welder or dragon going off with Extirpate cant you? I thought it was an instant, if you hit dragon with it, Im pretty sure the dragon player cant win, and if you hit the slaver in drain slaver they can't lock you.

Well yeah, it's an instant, but that is irrelevant to this situation. You also could also respond with, um, anything. However, what Outlaw was saying is that Cabal Therapy seems better than Charm, Extirpate has nothing to do with much at all.

There are just too many cards that are better than Charm, and yes, Cabal Therapy is one of them.

[The Atog Lord]

If you hit them and they have a welder, they will drop any of the huge robots in their hand

In all fairness, if they have a Welder, you should probably just be killing their Welder with the Charm.

[zeus-online]

You can respond to thw welder or dragon going off with Extirpate cant you? I thought it was an instant, if you hit dragon with it, Im pretty sure the dragon player cant win, and if you hit the slaver in drain slaver they can't lock you.

If you hit them turn 1 with a charm, you probably don't have an additional B for extirpate.
Its an instant however, so it can be cast on their turn which gives you 3 options:
1) Play it on your turn - IMO the worst thing you could do.
2) Play it on their upkeep - same situation as the first, except that you are doing it on their turn, thus giving them the information a little later, but still without allowing them to see another card from their drawstep.
3) Play it EOT - This works around the dragon combo, but they'll still have seen 1 additional card so they have a better option of ditching something completely useless.

1 and 2 could technically help an ichorid or dragon player, while the 3rd gives them 1 additional card to chose from...I'd probably still just go with the 3rd option, since it also allows you to untap and be ready with the much-hyped Extirpate.

Dosn't chalice for 1 completely rape this deck, however?

/Zeus

[netherspirit]

What did you cut from the standard SS list to make room for the Charms? I see that there is no longer Erayo, Soratami Ascendant, which is a very poor move since it flips so consistently in SS, and when it does, it most commonly is the equivalent to "gg."

The answer to that is that I didn't even START with an SS list. I built this from scratch and it just so happens that there are similarities between the two. I've considered using Erayo, but I don't know what to cut for her.

There are just too many cards that are better than Charm, and yes, Cabal Therapy is one of them.

How is it, exactly?

If you hit them and they have a welder, they will drop any of the huge robots in their hand

In all fairness, if they have a Welder, you should probably just be killing their Welder with the Charm.

Thank you for covering that one, The Atog Lord. This is another reason why I feel that the Charms are so good; they serve as removal against many of the most powerful creatures in the format.

Dosn't chalice for 1 completely rape this deck, however?

Hence why I'm running the bounce spells.

[zeus-online]

Is two bouncespells really enough? Unless you're playing against stax, resolving E. Truth will be very hard since all of your disruption is pretty much shut-down by chalice, and wipe away is slow, and your tutors are off-line aswell.

Fortunetly for you, chalice is mostly a SB card except in stax
I think the charms are usefull as general utility, but i don't think they will work very well like this...although casting funeral charm during the draw phase is pretty good if you get your opponent down to zero cards.

/Zeus

[netherspirit]

Is two bouncespells really enough? Unless you're playing against stax, resolving E. Truth will be very hard since all of your disruption is pretty much shut-down by chalice, and wipe away is slow, and your tutors are off-line aswell.

Fortunetly for you, chalice is mostly a SB card except in stax
I think the charms are usefull as general utility, but i don't think they will work very well like this...although casting funeral charm during the draw phase is pretty good if you get your opponent down to zero cards.

/Zeus

Well, I haven't got a SB yet, so maybe I could make one with a focus on bounce?

[Anusien]

Aside from the obvious Ichorid and Dragon utility, one of which is relevant and one of which isn't, what exactly are you planning on Extirpating?  You kind of want them to keep Force of Will in their deck so they can Hymn themselves countering your spells, Mana Drain doesn't give them a lot of mana, you don't really benefit from RFGing their Seas or Volcs...  In other words, I don't see any possible use where Extirpating them is more relevant than Crypting them, and Extirpate is better against both Dragon and Ichorid.

[wethepeople]

What did you cut from the standard SS list to make room for the Charms? I see that there is no longer Erayo, Soratami Ascendant, which is a very poor move since it flips so consistently in SS, and when it does, it most commonly is the equivalent to "gg."

The answer to that is that I didn't even START with an SS list. I built this from scratch and it just so happens that there are similarities between the two. I've considered using Erayo, but I don't know what to cut for her.

There are just too many cards that are better than Charm, and yes, Cabal Therapy is one of them.

How is it, exactly?

It really does look like SS, just with no Erayos, Stifle, Darkblast, and Hymn to Tourach.

Cabal Therapy is better for the disard, yes, but the only downside is that it can't ping anything when necessary. I don't see how these are any better than Stifle though, and considering that you already run Duress, you don't need more 1-drop discard spells.