Is Arcane Denial viable in Type 1?

[meadbert]

The answer may surprise you.
Imagine there were a sorcery that cost u1 and said discard a 0cc card from your hand and then draw three cards.  It would be broken.
Now imagine there were a hard counterspell that cost u1.  That too would be broken.
Now imagine a card that could do both!  This card is Arcane Denial.

Consider this card in Plagerize.dec (AKA: The Robert DiGregorio tribute deck)
1 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
2 Underground Sea
3 Island
4 Cephalid Colliseum
1 Tolarian Academy

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt

4 Mishra's Bauble
2 Urza's Bauble
1 Darksteel Colossus

1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

1 Tinker
1 Time Walk

4 Force of Will
4 Plagerize
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Arcane Denial
4 Mana Drain
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Repeal

sideboard:
4 Pithing Needle
4 Tormod's Crypt
2 Darksteel Colossus (Painter)
1 Rebuild
1 Brain Freeze
1 Echoing Truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Chain of Vapor

This list is highly customizable depending on the metagame.  Basically the Baubles can be replaced by Tormod's Crypts, Pithing Needles or even Engineered Explosives depending on your meta.  You can then use extra space in the board for more mass bounce and even more Islands against Stax.

History:  Once upon a time there was a fellow named Robert DiGregorio who would post his magical ideas on Star City Games.  Some of his ideas were terrible.  In fact to this day some folks will claim that all of his ideas were terrible.  We bashed him mercilessly.  It got to the point where if your girlfriend broke up with you and needed to blow off steam, your best bet was to go check Robby D's newest idea and bash it.  Plagiarize in Gifts?  Flagstones of Trokair in Fish?  Where did this guy come from?
Then something strange happened.  Someone in Europe actually ran a maindeck Plagiarize in Meandeck Gifts and top 8ed.  Next we saw Flagstones of Trokair showing up as a one of in U/W Fish.  Maybe Robby D was not full of BS after all?
Maybe some of his ideas deserved to be taken more seriously.

Of all his ideas the one that intrigued me the most was always Plagiarize.  That card just seemed good.  It also seemed to fit well into Turboland, which was my favorite deck at the time.  First, Turboland has no trouble accelerating to 4 mana.  Second, there was synergy with Timetwister since you could Mind Twist your opponent and draw 14 cards.  Finally there was Horn of Greed synergy.  Plagiarize on your opponent's upkeep with Horn out and they either must lose their draw AND their land drop or they must give you two draws.
Plagiarize never worked out in Turboland.  First, Turboland was bad to begin with.  Second, the worst cards were already Twister and Horn, thus what could I take out to make room for Plagiarize.
I did make one accidental discover while playing Plagiarize in Turboland.  After Plagiarizing my opponent on his upkeep I noticed that I had an untapped Tropical Island and Cephalid Coliseum.  I recognized that I could activate Coliseum to force my opponent to discard 3 cards while I drew 3 cards.  That seemed pretty good.  I kept trying to Force Plagiarize into Turboland but was having no success.

One day I was sharing my idea with Cody Vinci when he made what is in hindsight an obvious suggestion.  He suggested I used a Drain based shell.  Given that I had to run 4 Coliseums and 4 instant speed Plagiarizes to reliably assemble my combo, running a mostly blue Drain deck is the obvious choice in hindsight.  At the time it was not so obvious, so props to Cody for pointing me in the right direction.
Initial testing demonstrated that the most unreliable part of the combo was Threshold.  To more reliably establish Threshold I used a full set of Baubles and even Street Wraiths at times.

Now I found I could consistently pull off the combo by turn 4.  Thanks to Thirst and cantrips I could build Threshold and draw 10 or more cards by turn 4.  This also ensured that I could draw into both combo pieces.
Completing the Plagiarize/Coliseum combo is game breaking.  It is worse than Slavering someone and no more difficult to pull off.  It is also convenient that you can cast Plageriaze on your opponent's upkeep with Drain mana up.  If they let it resolve then you activate Coliseum forcing them to discard 3 cards and lose their draw for the turn while you draw 4 cards.  If they attempt to counter Plagiarize then you have Drain ready and you can Drain into a  ton of draw on the following turn.

While Plagiarize.dec looked like some sort of Control deck it actually had some of the strongest Yawg Wills in type 1.  The reason was the free Cantrips.  Repeals and Baubles meant that turn 3 utility Yawgs could easily draw 5-6 cards and a Yawg on turn 4 might draw 12 cards.  Best of all, because Baubles mean you do not draw till next turn's upkeep you actually discard down to 7 and then draw 3 cards on your next upkeeping which means you are clutching 10 cards before your opponent's next main phase.

For a while this list was consistently solid in my testing.  It struggled against Spheres and Rods and had no solutions to DSC or Warrens in the main, but it excelled
against other Drain decks and Long.  This meant that it was actually a decent meta choice back in the Pitch Long/Meandeck Gifts Era.  It also did fine against Slaver where Repeals are quite helpful for dealing with Welders.

Then Adam O'Brien came up with an interesting idea.  He suggested Arcane Denial.  His reasoning was that I could Arcane Denial my opponent's spell on their turn and then untap and steal all three draws with Plagiarize on my turn.  It sounded pretty good, but I soon discovered that this was only the beginning.

Uses for Arcane Denail
1)  Stupid Use:  Counter your opponent's Recall/Yawg/Tinker/Oath/Necro/Bargain other bomb.  Yes it is card disadvantage and cost u1, but so is Scrolling for Force.  Unlike Drain, Arcane Denial is regularly available on turn 1.  This card is a nightmare for Long for the same reason that Mana Leak is.
2)  Adam's Use:  Counter your opponent's spell EOT and then Plagiarize on upkeep to draw all 3 cards.  The result is a 4 for 2.  In reality this does not happen that often and generating +2 card advantage for 6 mana is not that broken, but is nice when it does happen.  In reality the spell that you want to counter is frequently a draw spell in which case Plagiarize would have just been better on its own.
3)  Play your own spell such as Thirst or Recall.  When it is Forced/Drain use Arcane Denial to counter your own spell.  Now you draw 3 cards for a mere u1 cost.  Folks thought using Remand as a 2 for 1 was good.  Using Arcane Denial as a 3 for 1 is broken.
4)  Play and counter your own 0cc spell such as a Bauble or Mox.  This trades 2 for 3 and basically functions as a lower cost sorcery speed Thirst for Knowledge.  This is a very solid turn 1 play and really loads the yard for Yawg.  The fist time I did this against one of my play test partners he was confused.  "Your turn 1 play was to play a spell and then counter it?"  Then I drew 3 card on his upkeep and he understood that I just dug 3 cards deep and drew 3 cards before he ever had a chance to draw.  "That was really good!"  This was Brainstorm with card advantage built in for a mear colorless extra of mana cast.  Sure you can Force the Bauble/Mox to counter both spells, but that is still a 2 for 2 so no loss.  Also your opponent could Drain the Bauble/Mox but generating 0 mana with Drain is not that exciting.  There is a reason that Counterspell does not show up in Type 1.
5)  Filter through Chalice of the Void/Null Rod.  Is that a Chalice@1 out there?  Eot I Repeal it and then Arcane Denial my own Repeal.  I draw 3 cards for the same cost as Thirst at instant speed.  The same is true for Null Rod.  Null Rod used to mostly hose this deck, but now between Thirst for Knowledge and Arcane Denial I can reliably filter through all of my Rodable artifacts and just draw a ton of cards.  Obviously this also applies to Chalice@0.  Post board you can filter out other mostly dead cards.  Just EOT Chain of Vapor any random permanent only counter it with Arcane Denial.  You just made a 3 for 2 trade for uu1 at instant speed and loaded the yard in the process.  The same can be done with Brain Freeze for 4 mana.  Best of all, if you find you are mana flooded and have Arcane Denial + Repeal then you can Repeal a mox and counter the mox on the way back down.  You just drew 4 cards for uu1!

After testing extensively with Arcane Denial I can say with great confidence that it is way better than Thirst for Knowledge in this deck.  Yes, it is better than Thirst in a Drain deck that runs 16 artifacts.  You can build card advantage for less mana investment and you have the option of countering bombs on turn 1 which is powerful against Long and frequently useful against Stax

From the list above the "meta" cards are the 6 Baubles and 4 Repeals.  Basically those could be Explosives, Tormod's Crypt, Pithing Needle or other bounce.  Using the Baubles and Repeals gets to Threshold faster and leads to better Yawgs and thus makes the deck more broken, but if you know your meta is 20% Ichorid and 50% Long then maindeck Tormod's Crypt makes more sense.

The inherent card advantage of Plagiarize.dec is huge.  First you only have 22 mana sources.  Of those, the 9 artifact mana can easily be Repealed and then Arcane Denialed on the way back down if you find you are mana flooded.  Finally Colliseums can always be used to filter through three more cards.  The result is that only 9 mana sources cannot be used for draw.  Combine this with the fact that you run 4 Thirsts, 4 Arcane Denial and 4 Plagiarize for incremental card advantage and it is impossible for other decks to keep up with you.  The only kind of deck that can compete are either Dragon with D/As or decks that run Intuition/AK.  Each can rival you in terms of how many cards they draw, but each also plays into your own hand by making your Plagiarizes more powerful.  Plagiarize in response to AK for 3 or 4 is game breaking.  Plagerize is still a 4 for 1 in response to a Bazaar activation or a Deep Analysis.

Weaknesses:  Sphere of Resistance is a pain since the Arcane Denial combo costs 4 instead of 2.  Also it is that much harder to get Plagiarize on line.  One way to beat Resistors is to board into the bounce + Brain Freeze plan.  Other helpful cards are extra Islands out of the board or use Engineered Explosives.  Explosives conveniently removes Resistor for a mere 2cc + the 2 activation cost.  While you can meta Plagiarize.dec for a Stax heavy meta game by moving Needles and Hurkyl's to the main instead of Repeal and Baubles, my advice is to pick another deck if you expect a good deal of Stax.

[The Atog Lord]

Excellent post. This is some really fresh thinking -- exactly what this format needs to continue growing stronger. My one suggestion is Lotus Petal. It helps get Plagiarize online earlier, and it is another zero-mana card to hit with Arcane Denial.

[Lurker101]

I posted something similar to this last night in the improvement forums.
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=36395.0

Bottom post.
I think it's a great idea.

[Xyre]

I'm unsure about Plagiarize. It feels really flimsy, especially without Mana Drain. But Arcane Denial is interesting. It's quite reminiscent to me of Repeal in Meandeck Tendrils. The deck usually couldn't use it defensively, thanks to its razor-thin mana base (although it could always bounce Chalice @ 0 etc.), but it was incredible when bouncing your own cards.

The difference, of course, is that Arcane Denial is a bit less profitable, because it costs you 2 mana plus a probably-mana-producing artifact, but beyond that, drawing 3 and setting up your YawgWill seems good. I like this in combo more than Strategic Planning, at least.

EDIT: Just remembered the cantrips are slow-trips. That's a bit less useful, but going turn 1 Denial is still profitable. You just need a lot of accelerants.

[meadbert]

Lurker101, it looks like you beat me to the punch!

Regarding Lotus Petal.  Petal might belong.  I left out Vault for the longest time and that was a mistake.  Vault has been so good.  Petal also seems to fit with the deck.  It is tough to compare Urza's Bauble and Petal because in reality they end up being Denialed or pitched to Thirst so often that they rarely matter too much.  Probably Petal is best though so good suggestion!

Getting to 6 mana by turn 4 is no trouble at all.  Gifts never had trouble comboing out by turn 4 and comboing out nearly always required 6 mana or more.
Also there should be 4 Drains in the list so it is fairly easy to Drain into a turn 3 Plagiarize.  The downside is you must do it on your turn so you do not get to steal their draw for their draw phase.

The slowtrips have their advantages in that they sort of act as Library of Leng and allow you to maintain a greater hand size.

[Shock Wave]

I've tried abusing Arcane Denial in a similar manner and had to abandon the idea. It's a cute little trick, but it's always a 2 card combo that doesn't do enough when assembled, in a format where two card combos are enough to win games. I'd be happy to see this idea pan out, but it seems very unlikely.

[Naurion]

The deck does look fun, but in general I think combos involving cards that are sub-optimal on their own are not good enough in T1. In this list Cephalid Coliseum, Baubles, Plagarism, and Arcane Denial -- the core of what you are trying to abuse -- are ok but not great on their own.

Since each of those combos do not win the game, but instead setup the win, I think they are more comparable to something like Brainstorm + Polluted Delta or Thirst + Pithing Needle/T.Crypt. Fetchlands and Brainstorm were amazing on their own. Or even if you look at Thirst + Pithing Needle/T.Crypt, both halves of the combo could be useful. Comparing that to Arcane Denial + Random Artifact, I would much rather have the Thirst by itself over Arcane Denial.

Those are my thoughts on it, but I am still open to seeing how well this deck performs.

[meadbert]

Show Wave and Naurion raise some important issue.  Just because a set of cards have synergy does, make them good.  Cards must also be considered in terms of what they do on their own.  For instance Oath without Orchard and Orchard without Oath are quite different in power than the two cards together.

NOTE:  If anyone is looking for an existing deck to add Arcane Denial to than ICBM Oath is the perfect candidate.  Once you drop Chalice/Rod you can Denial any moxes you draw into.  Denial adds even more anti combo tech.
You can also Denial your own Chalice in cases where you draw extras.

It is important to keep in mind that Arcane Denial does not just combo with 6 Baubles.  It works well with any of the 21 0cc and 1cc cards in the deck.  (I am not counting Recall, although it works well with Recall too since you can Denial your own Recall IF your opponent counters it.)
Gaining card advantage for u1 is a "cute trick."  It is a very effective and efficient trick and one that you can pull off several times in a game.  Thirst has shown up in decks as diverse as Slaver, Gifts, Stax, Oath and Drain Tendrils for years.  Some decks like Slaver and Stax were looking to pitch high casting cost artifacts to Weld in.  Others like Gifts, Drain Tendrils and Oath were just looking for filter and card advantage. 
Thirst puts 2 cards in the yard.  Arcane Denial puts two cards in the yard.  Thirst draws 3 cards.  Arcane Denial draws 3 cards.  Arcane Denial cannot be played at instant speed in conjunction with a Mox, but you can Denial your own Repeals, Vamp and Mystical EOT at instant speed.  The fact that Arcane Denial does not work with artifacts at instant speed is more than made up by it low casting cost.  Consider Merchant Scroll and Cunning Wish.  Which sees more play?  Cunning Wish is instant speed and more flexible, but Scroll is U1 instead of U2 thus it is the better card.  That extra 1 in the casting cost is huge and this is why Arcane Denial is better than Thirst.

Okay so Arcane Denial works well in conjunction with a low casting cost card but it still does little on its own.  You still need that low casting cost card right!  Well consider this statement:
Ancestral Recall does little on its own and is too reliant on having one of your 16 blue mana sources!

In reality you usually have the blue source to cast Ancestral and in reality you usually have the low casting cost card to Arcane Denial.

But what if you top deck Arcane Denial with an empty hand?  Now it is truly on its own and it is pretty bad right?  Not exactly.  There are too possibilities.  The first is that your opponent is about to play a game winning spell.  In this case it is convenient that you are in fact holding a hard counter!  The other possibility is that your opponent does not have the win and they pass the turn back to you.  In that case just about any card you draw will be good.  As I mentioned in the opening post, because you can filter through artifact mana with Arcane Denial and because Colliseum is a broken Careful Study in the late game, Plagiarize.dec has amazing top decks in the late game.
While being bad on it own is a draw back that should be considered, I actually contend that Arcane Denial is not that bad on its own.  Neither are the other cards mentioned when compared against type 1 staples.

Type 1 is full of cards that are not good enough "on their own."  Dark Ritual is not useful unless you have a powerful spell to accelerate out.  Tendrils of Agony is not good on its own.  Goblin Welder is terrible "on it own."  Tinker is not useful without a big artifact to Tinker out.  Oath is not useful without creatures to Oath out or without Orchard.  Thirst for Knowledge is weak in a deck that runs no artifacts other than 5 moxes and Black Lotus.  Mana Drain is week in a deck that has no instant speed draw or tutors.  Workshops are week in a deck that has only 15 artifacts.  To look at a card and question if it is good on its own can be helpful if you are questioning whether you can work that card into an existing deck.  For this reason one could argue that Shop is bad on its own, thus it makes a poor addition to Control Slaver even though it accelerates out Trike/Titan/Mindslaver.  If instead someone proposes running a deck built around Shop, then how good Shop is on its own no longer matter.

Compared to other type 1 staples, how good are Coliseum, Baubles and Plagiarize on their own?  Since you have them on their own lets imagine that you have just that card in hand and you opponent only has 1 card or an empty hand.

Coliseum:  There is little to do here but make your land drop.  Next turn however you can filter through 4 cards to find the best so Coliseum sure beats Island, Fetch or Underground Sea "on its own."

Bauble:  You will draw on upkeep and you will now know half of your opponent's hand.  That is not bad at all.

Plagiarize:  At worst Plagiarize is 2 for 1.  Here you can play it on upkeep to steal your opponent's draw.  If your opponent is unfortunate enough to attempt to play a draw spell on upkeep you can steal that.  Against decks that pack Thirst, Plagiarize is flat out amazing.  Against decks with no draw engine it is much weaker but it is never terrible since it still builds card advantage.

I actually have notes on over a hundred games I have played with a version of this deck so I may post those a little later to give folks a sense of how the deck plays out.

There are plenty of weaknesses:
1)  Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst, Trinisphere (Arcane Denial/Force/Drain these on the way down if possible.  Repealing them costs 4 which is tough)
2)  Uba Mask (One it resolves you need to tutor up Tinker and go for DSC as fast as possible)
3)  Darksteel Colossus, Sundering Titan, Empty the Warrens  (Could be addressed by adding a Token Echoing Truth to the main deck)
4)  Stifle/Trickbind (Your opponent can stifle the Denial trigger and counter two spells for 1.  This is not THAT bad)

Strengths are:
1)  Decks with draw engines. (Drain Tendrils, Control Slaver)
2)  Fast combo. (Dragon, Long, Belcher)
3)  Fish:  Repeal is really good here.  Arcane Denial dodges Rod/Chalice while you repeatedly Repeal their most threatening creatures.
4)  Oath:   See above, only save your Repeal for their Oath and just Repeal it continuously.
5)  Dark Confidant/Dreadnaught based Decks:  Plagiarize cannot steal a Bob draw, but Repeal on Bob is great since you get a 2 for 1 for u2 which is solid.  Also Repeal is naturally quite amazing for answering Dreadnaught.

[Bongo]

This is some innovative thinking here, nice work!

What about adding 1 Echoing Truth and 1 Hurkyl's Recall as additional bounce spells? They help to address your weak points.

Is a single DSC enough as a win-condition? Something like Tendrils or Brain Freeze in the maindeck would give you more strategic options than just DSC.

[meadbert]

Just the token DSC is rarely a problem.  Basically Swords and Extract are the two scary cards.  No one plays Extract, but Swords can be a problem.

Tinker->DSC works wonderfully as a win condition because it is exactly the opposite of what your generic strategy is.  Generally you want to abuse your yard, cast instants  and play a lot of spells.
This leads to opponents who try to defeat your strategy by using cards like Resistor, in the Eye and Tormod's Crypt.  It is convenient that hate which stops your engine does nothing against your actual win.
This works for the same reason that the Oath transformational board works so well in Dragon.  Your opponent can hate out your yard which leaves the Oath engine and your primary win condition untouched or they can pull out their graveyard hate in which case your Bazaars, Intuitions and Deep Analysis will tear them up.  In type 1 you want to abuse the yard without relying on it.  That is what Tinker->DSC allows for here.

Brain Freeze is an excellent alternative win.  First you can Denial is for 4 mana which is not good, but not terrible.  It also pitched to Force.  If you are set to cast Yawg next turn you can always Brain Freeze on your opponent's turn to really load the yard.  This can be risky if you are holding the tutor for Yawg, but might be worth the risk.  Finally you can mess up an opponent's top deck tutor with Brain Freeze.

The trouble with Tendrils is getting the black mana.  Gifts had far more tutors and thus usually had Lotus when it went off.  The same is true of Drain Tendrils.  Also Tendrils is mostly dead in your hand since it does not filter to Denial well or pitch to Force.

Another option is a second Darksteel Colossus.  DSC pitches to Thirst nicely so in that manner it can help with card advantage.  This also fixes those times when you have Tinker but DSC is in hand.  Finally you can randomly hose Painter if they try to Grindstone you and both are still in your library.

I forgot to mention that an idea that I tried before, but never worked out was Trinket Mage.

Here is why it should work in theory.  Trinket Mage allows you to run 1 Tormod's Crypt, 1 Pithing Needle and maybe even Aether Spellbomb and Engineered Explosives.  Those guys all pitch to Thirst and Denial nicely if they are drawn and they provide wonderful outs.  Repeal has a bit of Trinket Mage synergy since you pay 4 to "draw" 2 since you get Mage back along with the card drawn from Repeal.  Finally Trinket Mage provides an alternate win condition so if DSC is Swordsed you can always win with Trinket Mage beats.  The theory sounds good at least to me.

In practice, when I tried Trinket Mage it never quite worked out.  I cannot say why exactly, but it felt slow in general.  The last time I tried this it may have been during the GAT meta so things may have changed.  Also Trinket Mage tends to lead to things like putting Mage and Needle into play.  These do not load the yard and do not lead to the Plagiarize combo or huge Yawgs.  Also tapping out when you could have Drain up is never a great idea.  In reality I would end up paying 3 to get rid of Pithing Needle and then pitch my Trinket Mages to Force whenever I could.  It just made the deck flow worse.  Perhaps the real problem was that I did not properly adjust my mana base for a higher mana curve.

The other idea is to ditch Tinker and DSC altogether and just use Dreadnaught/Stifel as your win.  Dreadnaught pitches to both Thirst and Denial nicely so drawing into extras is okay.  Stifle has some synergy with Denial in that you can always Stifle the draw 2 ability for your opponent.  This is not that good since you end up with a 2 for 2 trade.  Anyway, I have never actually tested this idea, but itt could be intresting.

[TopSecret]

Have you considered splashing red to play Empty the Warrens maindeck, instead of Colossus?
Besides Echoing Truth and perhaps explosives,
I think there are less common answers to a large Warrens.
You play so many Baubles, Repeals, and zero cost spells that making a big Warrens should be easy.

Warrens takes up one less slot than Tinker-Colossus, too.

It would weaken the manabase, so I can see why it might not be worth it.

Perhaps Chalice would be worth maindeck or sideboard inclusion?
As you mentioned, you can easily play around a Chalice to your advantage,
and it helps the 0cc-Arcane Denial theme, as well as being a solid card on its own.

I like the deck idea! Thanks for posting it.
It's always nice to see something innovative in Vintage.

PS:

If you did splash red in the maindeck you could play Manamorphose
to add to storm, filter mana, reach threshold, draw cards off Will, and enable a
first turn Mana Drain!!!

[kalisia]

Thank you Meadbert for this great article, you've given here some funny fresh ideas!
I don't know if it's good, I'm thinking in Isochron Scepter. Imprinting Arcane Denial doesn't seem so bad?  You can counter opponent's spells, or you counter your moxes to draw 3 new cards each time

[kl0wn]

Then Adam O'Brien came up with an interesting idea.  He suggested Arcane Denial.  His reasoning was that I could Arcane Denial my opponent's spell on their turn and then untap and steal all three draws with Plagiarize on my turn.  It sounded pretty good, but I soon discovered that this was only the beginning.

Isn't the draw from denial optional?

Rules Text (Oracle):  Counter target spell. Its controller may draw up to two cards at the beginning of the next turn's upkeep.
You draw a card at the beginning of the next turn's upkeep.

Sorry if I ruined the party.

Having a draw engine that doubles as emergency hard counters still seems fairly strong though.

[IthilanorStPete]

Then Adam O'Brien came up with an interesting idea.  He suggested Arcane Denial.  His reasoning was that I could Arcane Denial my opponent's spell on their turn and then untap and steal all three draws with Plagiarize on my turn.  It sounded pretty good, but I soon discovered that this was only the beginning.

Isn't the draw from denial optional?

Yep, To quote the ruling in Gatherer:

9/16/2007 The controller of the countered spell doesn't choose how many cards to draw until the relevant ability resolves.

[meadbert]

That does make it somewhat worse, although the best use was always Denialing your own spell. 

[agesga]

First of all, congratulations for this deck.

One question related with the may draw

Just imagine that your opponent casts in his turn a spell (let's invent it): you may draw up to 3 cards and then discard 3 cards.
While casting it, must he anounce if he is going to draw? or can he wait until the spell resolves on the stack?

I don't know if the same applies at the beginning of someone's upkeep if arcane denial was casted on the previous turn.

Thanks.

[credmond]

If I am not mistaken, the draws the opponent gets from arcane denial go on the stack at the beginning of the next upkeep which gives you an opportunity to plagiarize in response if he elects to actually draw. This can get to be a guessing game of whether he thinks you have plagiarize or not. If he chooses to take his draw then you can plagiarize in response (if you have it). If he chooses not to take his draw then he has just made your arcane denial into an excellent hard counter.

[Purple Hat]

shouldn't it work like:
trigger goes on the stack giving him the option to draw.  When the trigger resolves he either choses to draw or not to.

I don't think you can plagiarize after he decides.

[meadbert]

So since Plagiarize does not significant Synergy with Arcane Denial it could be replaced with anything else.

Fact or Fiction comes to mind.  There are also the other 2 Baubles, Explosives, Tormod's Crypt and alternate wins.

Also Coliseums could become Fetches, Duals and Islands.

[Omnius89]

Hi this is my first post here at TMD, and I haven't actually played a real game of magic since Dissension came out, but I like to read this and the SCG boards and keep up with vintage for fun. Keep in mind that I have not palyed a vintage tourney for almost 2 years and I am out of practice/little time for testing when reading this,

Anyways, I loaded this deck into Apprentice and played several games with your original version vs. different decks i have saved (slaver, DT, Long, goblins) and I found that the draw engine was very powerful, but tinker colossus would sometimes be too slow or be unable to dig me out of a losing situation, so I wanted the ability to win now.

At first I tried tweaking the deck so that it almost felt like gifts by adding tendrils kill and more mana, making the decklist look like this...

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Arcane Denial
3 Plagiarize
2 Repeal
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Rebuild
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Dark Ritual
1 Cabal Ritual
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Darksteel Colossus
4 Mishra's Bauble
9 SoLoMoxVaultCrypt
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Cephalid Coliseum
2 island
3 Underground Sea
2 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand

This new version of the deck seemed to keep the same draw engine as well as being able to just win after drawing 6 cards or so in one turn, but after my (limited) testing, i found that the gifts and rituals were clogging up my hand sometimes, and it wasn't always easy to build up 9 storm and BB when i needed to unless i had Lotus/rebuild. This led me to try TopSecret's idea of adding red for empty the warrens, and I made the following changes to try it out.

-1 underground sea
-1 tendrils
-1 dark ritual
-1 cabal ritual
-1 gifts ungiven
-1 tinker
-1 colossus

+2 volcanic island
+2 empty the warrens
+1 lotus petal
+1 repeal
+1 arcane denial

I also added tinker colossus to the SB for if they decide to board in EE, but it seems suboptimal because iit is still vulnerable to echoing truth, but like I said I have done very little testing so feel free to try what you will. These changes made the deck able to put pressure on the opponent very early, unlike tinkering later in the game after drawing half your deck, it can know empty on turn 1/2 then bury opponent in counters/card advantage or take time walks with plagiarize/repeals on blockers/permanents. I left in hurkyl's recall and rebuild but they may prove to be unnecesary if you don't have many shops, but they are golden against one of the decks main weaknesses, spheres.

Thanks for hearing me out and I look forward to becoming part of the TMD community.

[ErkBek]

So since Plagiarize does not significant Synergy with Arcane Denial it could be replaced with anything else.

Fact or Fiction comes to mind.  There are also the other 2 Baubles, Explosives, Tormod's Crypt and alternate wins.

Also Coliseums could become Fetches, Duals and Islands.

So why play this deck over other blue strategies then?

[meadbert]

So since Plagiarize does not significant Synergy with Arcane Denial it could be replaced with anything else.

Fact or Fiction comes to mind.  There are also the other 2 Baubles, Explosives, Tormod's Crypt and alternate wins.

Also Coliseums could become Fetches, Duals and Islands.

So why play this deck over other blue strategies then?

Arcane Denial.  Trading 2 for 3 for u1 is very good.  Having a counter up on turn 1 is very good.  Trading 3 for 1 to counter your own countered spell is very good.
The (0cc artifact)/(Arcane Denial) engine is very strong and could be played in a number of shells including Slaver and Oath.

It is Arcane Denial that is very good, not Plagiarize.  I listede a Plagiarize shell at first because I thought there was added synergy, but there is not.

EDIT:  Another replacement for Plagiarize could be Skeletal Scrying. You load the yard life crazy so you should be able to Scry for a lot.

[mmmekeel]

Forgive me if I'm blind but is DSC the only win condition? I'm just trying to figure out the deck.

[Wagner]

Trading 3 for 1 to counter your own countered spell is very good.

The deck seems very interesting, but that is what I am having a problem with.

I can difficultly see why you would want to counter a spell that your opponent is countering.

First, if you are initiating the counter war, as an opponent, the only 3 spells I would really want to counter are Tinker, Recall and Will, none of which you want to lose the counter war for. If you even Repeal something that bugs your opponent and he counters it, then countering your own Repeal seems like a step backwards.

On the other hand, if your opponent initiated the counter war with let's say, Goyf that you don't like (any gamebreaking spell will obviously be hard countered by Denial), you then Drain it, he Drains, then you Denial your Drain. Your opponent has -1 card advantage and your get +1 (-1 Drain, -1 Denial, +3 next upkeep) but he gets to keep whatever you deemed worthy to use a Drain on, and you don't get any Drain mana (if a Force was used, you don't get any card advantage).

I haven't tested the deck, but a scenario where countering your own countered spell would be appreciated. Not saying there is none, I just can't think of one on the top of my head like that.

Other that that, with the Plagiarize and Coliseum gone, I would probably add Dark Confidants and Duress, or even Toughtseize, that's a spell worth countering if it backfires.

[meadbert]

The two most common scenarios are:

1:  You Plagiarize on your opponent's upkeep with u and colliseum available to wreck their hand.  They Drain.  You can no Denial your own Plagiarize and draw 3.  It is not as good as reaming their hand, but you still get +2 card advantage.

2:  You play Thirst, they Drain, you Denial your own Thirst and instead of drawing 3 and discarding an artifact you just draw 3.

DSC is the only win condition in the main.  Brain Freeze is an alternate win in the board.

EDIT:  Another potential win condition that I have not tried is Magus of the Future.  He has a ton of Synergy with the 0 Cost artifacts.  Perhaps even Tops could be added.  They can be Repealed in response to drawing or Denialed or pitched to Thirst.  All three would generate card advantage.  On the other hand, with so many low casting cost cards the Synergy with Magus himself is somewhat diminished.

[Tobi]

Regarding win-conditions you can try

- Psychatog
- Tidespout Tyrant (with Show and Tell)

[Tin_Mox5831]

Very nice work. Well written and thoughtful analysis too. I don't honestly know of a home for Arcane Denial off the top of my head, but it is interesting for sure.

[Tobi]

I don't honestly know of a home for Arcane Denial off the top of my head, but it is interesting for sure.

Well, basically you can use it in any shell, the only restriction being the use of blue mana. See it as some kind of draw engine with a more flexible usage.

At least it is something to toy around with.

[kl0wn]

I can see a fundamentally strong deck emerging from this use of Arcane Denial, but I think it would be best to ditch the baubles and "bad cards" and instead start with a skeleton of useful 0cc cards.

What immediately come to mind are:

Chalice of The Void
Tormod's Crypt
Engineered Explosives


Perhaps add more 0cc mana artifacts (probably only Petal):

Lotus Petal
Lion's Eye Diamond
Maybe Mox Diamond and/or Chrome Mox (but most likely not)

Definitely include Thirst for Knowledge just because of the synergy.

Use the Storm mechanic to win off a big Will.

Include Tinker and Colossus or Titan because you have 12 hard counters and some hardcore draw to make them stick until your opponent is dead. Titan might help cut them off mana to cast what you give them.

Have a ton of free sideboard slots for whatever, because half the cards you'd normally have in the sideboard are in your main deck.

So you get a combo/control deck with hosers, board control, a draw engine that might come close to making up for the loss of Brainstorm (and doesn't cost $500 - *cough* Strategic Planning *cough*) and additionally has four cards that read "I don't lose the game right now", which conveniently, can also be available on the first turn.

From what I've been reading on the current environment, the maindeck hosers would contribute to a favorable game one vs. a lot of the format. Ichorid seems like it would practically be an auto-win in particular.

Another possible 0cc consideration: The Future Sight Pacts - providing that the "you lose the game" condition only kicks in if the Pact resolves. Somebody set me straight here.


The whole reasoning behind this approach is that you get a draw engine, 4 more hard counters and cards that can wreck entire strategies long enough for you to sneak away with the win in a fairly tight package (it slices, it dices, it makes jullienne fries...). I'm trying to think up some undesireable scenarios with this hoser strategy:

Arcane Denial and no 0cc spell - You sit there with a cheap hard counter until you get a 0cc spell or your opponent tries to ruin your fun. If they do, you counter the transgression and probably win the counter war if there is one. You then live to see another turn (with an extra card to boot) and they get two freebies that may or may not help them (most likely not, since one of their few relevent cards was just absorbed by your counterwall).

Wrong hoser, no Denial - This plain sucks, but you can also pitch your unwanted hoser to Thirst or play it and Tinker it away. Not that bad of a deal.

Wrong hoser, no Denial/Thirst/Tinker - Learn to mulligan.

Right hoser, Denial in hand - Congratulations, you have a card that wrecks your opponent's strategy and a hard counter to force it down or protect it.

Let me know what I've missed here.

As an aside, I'd love to see an open-source deck become a contender; it's been a while. Especially if it's using cards that have been dismissed as complete garbage for years.

I think the badness of Arcane Denial is probably a leftover from when we played Morphlings as win conditions, before the concept of tempo existed and control could just win. Of course the card violates one of the fundamental rules by allowing your opponent more resources, but those two cards are irrelevent if your opponent doesn't see the next turn in which to draw them and/or whatever they draw is less of a threat than what you either countered or squeezed into play.

[Cavius The Great]

Imagine there were a sorcery that cost u1 and said discard a 0cc card from your hand and then draw three cards.  It would be broken.
Now imagine there were a hard counterspell that cost u1.  That too would be broken.
Now imagine a card that could do both!  This card is Arcane Denial.

I'm confused. In what instance does Plagiarize cost 0 mana?