Tops

[GUnit]

Last night, at about the hour mark of a futile attempt to fall asleep I found myself reflecting on some advice I had received regarding my slaver list and the interaction between Sensei's Divining Top and Magus of the Future. Since there was no way in hell that I was getting to sleep any time soon I decided to pick up my deck and see what I'd cut for a couple of tops. While running through potential cuts I ended up setting aside all the red cards, the big artifacts and the thirsts- so basically the entire slaver deck. What occurred to me at this point was that I could add a second Magus of the Future and a third top and focus on that strategy rather than the oft inconsistent slaver base and the randomness involved in trying to steal wins with Magus of the Moon. This, of course, lead to the possibility of reverting back to the objectively more powerful black splash for Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Yawgmoth's Will and X amount of Duress.

I decided black was the way to go and so my goal became filling out the rest of the list with cards the play nice with Top and Magus. Obvious answers number 1 and 2 are Counterbalance, which supplements the disruption package and practically serves as a win condition with a top in play; and Dark Confidant who serves as an excellent replacement for Thirst for Knowledge, beats for two and costs little or no life with a top in play.

Due to the nature of the design choices I had made, the deck at this point was much more focused on dropping early threats. So, I filled the last two slots with Misdirections to increase the likelihood of resolving my early threats, to turn opposing edicts and swords the opposite direction, and to randomly steal an ancestral now and then. They also make it more likely that my Counter-Top engine will hit an answer to Force of Will.

At this point, being that I was now wide awake, I shuffled the deck up and goldfished it a few times. I discovered two important facts:

        1) Once this deck gets rolling (ie. bobs, top/balance or magus online) it can pretty much resolve any spell it wants to, including Yawg’s Will.

        2) Even if you can't find Yawg's Will, if there's a Magus in play you can play an awful lot of spells in one turn (Magus + Top = 1 mana to increase storm count by 1 and draw a card).

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. I wanted to add Tendrils of Agony to the deck, but I wasn't sure what to take out. After some deliberation, I decided I could live without drawing Platz/DSC (wasn't sure which I was going to run) in my opening hand or randomly flipping it to a bob, so I cut tinker/robot for tendrils + X.
Anyway, I won't waste any more of your time fussing over the details, but suffice to say that I spent a while subbing things in and out and messing around on MWS. Here's the list I ended up with:

Tops v1.3

Tops (3):
3 x Sensei's Divining Top

The Top Fan Club (8):
2 x Magus of the Future
4 x Dark Confidant
2 x Counterbalance

Tendrils (1):
1 x Tendrils of Agony

Answers (15):
3 x Mana Drain
4 x Force of Will
2 x Misdirection
3 x Duress
1 x Repeal
1 x Echoing Truth
1 x Balance

Search/Draw/Utterly Broken (9):
3 x Brainstorm
1 x Vampiric Tutor
1 x Mystical Tutor
1 x Demonic Tutor
1 x Yawgmoth's Will
1 x Ancestral Recall
1 x Time Walk

Mana Sources (24):
3 x Underground Sea
1 x Tundra
6 x Blue Fetch
9 x SoLoMoxenCryptPetal
1 x Tolarian Academy
1 x Library of Alexandria
3 x Island

SB:
2 x Hurkyl's Recall
1 x Rebuild
1 x Echoing Truth
4 x Leyline of the Void
1 x Darkblast
3 x Threads of Disloyalty
2 x Extirpate
1 x Duress

The maindeck slots which I view as negotiable (ie. potential cuts, given solid reasoning) are the following:
2 x Misdirection
1 x Balance
1 x Repeal
3 x Mana Drain
3 x Duress
1 x Mystical Tutor
2 x Counterbalance


Random card choice explanations:

Repeal - It works nicely with Magus, it answers unruly Meddling Mages and Quirion Dryads, and it contributes to the tendrils game plan.

Balance - Balance is a guilty pleasure of mine. I try to fit it into as many decks as I possibly can. The great thing about it is that nobody expects it, and I don't mind drawing it when it's not particularly useful, because that hopefully means I'm already winning.

Mystical/Vampiric Tutor - Excellent with magus and can serve as clutch counterspells with a counterbalance in play.

Brainstorm - I know it's blasphemy, but somewhere along the line I cut one for the mystical tutor. This was partly a result of being frustrated by nearly useless brainstorms when a top was already in play- their effects are sort of redundant. I could cut one of my cute tricks like balance or repeal to get back the fourth, and I may after more testing.

I considered playing a Hurkyl's Recall main in light of the fact that stax is on the rise and it facilitates comboing with limited resources (ie. no will), but for now it's sitting in the sideboard.


I want to emphasize that I'm not interested in maximizing the power of a theme deck. The focus is to simply play strong spells- hopefully with some synergy- and minimize the amount of marginal or narrow effects in the deck. I haven't tested enough to provide statistics on various matchups, but I do believe that this deck has a lot of potential.

[Mixing Mike]

This looks like the next step in Sensei Sensei.  I am currently working on a new list of Sensei Sensei, as it is my favorite deck ever.  First some comments about Sensei in the past.  After a few events with good standings and lots of playtesting, I wrote this.  I'd suggest reading it for ideas regarding a combo control Sensei deck.

Helm of Awakening let's you win the turn you have a Top, Helm and Magus / Future Sight in play.  You basically draw your deck, cast a Wish for Brainfreeze and win.  I think the Tendrils kill is too mana intensive.

As for your decklist, I'd like to suggest the addition of green to the deck.  Simply put, Tolarian Academy and Moxen are the real power behind pumping out a 2UUU sorcery speed spell.  Crop Rotation will give you another tutor to let this happen.  I believe that the more tutors you can run, the better.  You also pick up Fastbond, which is just plain stupid with a Future Sight effect.  If you wanted to, you could go in a completey different direction and make it some kind of an Oath-based variant with the addition of Green.  This let's you run one or two Magus and reduces it's CC from 2UUU to 1G, making it able to keep up in this blazing format.

As Ben Kowal has posted, any deck not running 4 Duress is lacking something.  The format is too fast to not run the full set of 4.  I do like black in the deck, I feel it's one of the two base colors.

Problem is the mana base right now.  The deck can run dual-colored, yet it only get's better with whatever splash you add.  I do think that adding more than one off color is a big mistake when all the Tier-2 decks are running Wastelands.  Also, the Helm of Awakening strat may be a bad idea with 9-sphere decklists running around.

Your decklist is a good start, but I think running Library is a mistake, as is not having a full set of Brainstorms and Duresses.  I also think you need a faster draw engine, Dark Confidants aren't going to cut it, though they are fun with a Mague in play.

[GUnit]

Sensei Sensei is a very interesting deck. My friend used to play it about a year ago. However, I specifically tried to restrain myself from turning this into a combo deck. My goal was simply to build a solid control deck. I'm still playing to the same tune as the control slaver deck that this evolved from in that I'm not worried about winning now; I'm just worried about playing control while beating with my wizards until the opportune moment and then switching gears to end the game. I think this discrepancy contributes to our different valuations of Library of Alex.

I have only conducted limited testing against opponents so far, although I'm meeting up with the team tonight to play, but in goldfishing I have found mana to be a problem when going for the tendrils kill just once, and it was due to a play error. I have been considering the addition of hurkyl's recall as a pre-emptive response to the anticipated rise of stax and to help along storm and mana production if I decide to try and go for the win.

I agree that my draw engine is slow. Perhaps I can find room for a few thirst for  knowledge.

You're probably right about duress and brainstorm... I'll keep them in mind while playesting this evening.

Fastbond is an excellent suggestion, however the confidants can be painful if I don't get top online early in the game. If I remove balance, though, I will definitely consider replacing the tundra with a trop and adding this.

[Methuselahn]

Sensei Sensei is a very interesting deck. My friend used to play it about a year ago. However, I specifically tried to restrain myself from turning this into a combo deck. My goal was simply to build a solid control deck. I'm still playing to the same tune as the control slaver deck that this evolved from in that I'm not worried about winning now; I'm just worried about playing control while beating with my wizards until the opportune moment and then switching gears to end the game.

If you are playing control, how does adding more Future Sights help this?  In CS, the addition of Future Sight (which is so very Kowalish) is definitely a singleton to end the game.  If you want to build a control deck then maybe just one copy in your Slaver list.  If you want to focus the deck on Future Sight, research Sensei deck.  Be the best deck that you can be.

I like your ideas, but you list is trying to do too many different things that way.

[GUnit]

All that I am trying to do is play good cards. I don't want to commit to a strategy that revolves around getting a specific combination of cards on the table. The only concessions I have made to this end are tops 2 and 3, and 2 counterbalances. A single counterbalance is never really dead, though, because A) it's effective counterbait; and B) it still works with brainstorms and instant topdeck tutors. Perhaps I will address the issue of redundant tops by adding a few Thirsts to the decklist. My only justification for running them in the first place, outside of the fact that in a vacuum they are decent, is that they have very strong interaction with three different threats that my deck produces, and they work nicely with fetchlands.

The decision that the future sight effect must be a singleton is arbitrary. It "must" be a singleton in CS because you already have a handful of powerful cards that are complete trash in your opening 7. This deck experiences much fewer virtual mulligans than a standard control slaver list. I could, though, remove a magus and another useful card and replace them with tinker and some enormous artifact that's potentially even worse in my opening hand, but may serve as a stronger threat in many situations.

Otherwise, I'm playing a standard drain deck with confidants drawing me cards.  I'm not sure what you mean when you say that my deck is trying too many things. It's trying to win the game by playing a handful of very common control elements and beating with 6 wizards, and it has a completely independent secondary win condition in tendrils of agony, which just happens to be painfully easy to achieve with a magus in play.

Just for the sake of argument, would you be significantly more satisfied with the list if I made the following change?

-1 Magus of the Future
-1 Counterbalance
+2 Thirst for Knowledge


EDIT:

As a side note, what really tempted me to try Magus was the CS deck that Jeremiah Rudolph has recently piloted to two solid finishes, although I did originally see FS in Kowal's list. FS was also in versions of Keeper in the deck's later years.

[LUPO]

Very interesting Idea, I like it. 

I think that this deck is screaming for Trinket Mage.  He gets the top/lotus/mox/what ever else you put in the toolbox, is blue, shuffles for BS/top and beats for 2.  He is a great drain dump and even just pulling out the mox sapphire is often a good choice. 

Have you found the mana to be an issue, in needing atleast 3 black to go off with the will you look like you will strain yourself.

Mike