Tezzeret the Painter

[Bongo]

Another Tezzeret deck, how lame...

However, preliminary testing results have been anything but lame. This deck is the real deal, even in its rough form.
There are numerous advantages for including Painter in a Tezzeret deck (or vice versa):

1. REB maindeck, which is very good in this Drain-dominated metagame. REB combined with Painter is obviously the shizz.

2. Three different win-conditions, who are synergistic with each other. You can protect Tezzeret with Painter (and REB), or search up the missing part. If one win-condition gets denied, you can easily switch to another. As a minor bonus, Jester's Cap and Extract are not good against you anymore.

3. Strategic flexibility, you can sneak in the Painter combo in the early-game, force it through in the mid-game with REBs, or dominate the late-game with Tezzeret.

When playing the deck, you'll notice its enormous flexibility. Here's the decklist:


Tezzeret the Painter, by Bongo

Tutoring:
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Tinker
1 Fact or Fiction

Broken:
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm

Solution-Package:
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Pithing Needle
1 Tormod's Crypt

Defense:
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
3 Red Elemental Blast

Win-Conditions:
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
2 Painter's Servant
1 Grindstone
1 Time Vault
1 Darksteel Colossus

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

3 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Academy Ruins


There are 19 artifacts to support Thirst, with Will and Academy Ruins allowing you to recur important stuff. Intuition/AK is also a possibility, but space is tight and I don't like the "all-in" character of this draw engine (e.g. your intuitioned-for AK gets countered). I think Intuition for other cards than AK is too weak when you're not playing Storm combo.
The number of Painter's could probably reduced to 2, but I like multiple copies in case it gets countered/destroyed, you can also discard excess copies with Thirst. Merchant Scroll was excluded because it was the weakest slot in the deck and I sided it out often.
The sideboard should be tailored around your metagame, so I don't list one if there's no request.

Let me know what you think of this build.

[M.Solymossy]

How is jesters cap NOT good against you?

1 Time Vault
1 Tinker
1 Grindstone

If I'm playing Jesters cap, I'm perfectly fine taking those, and leaving you with 2 tezzerets and 3 painters to win with, and DSC *IF* you can hardcast it.   And depending on my deck, I might just take the 2 tezzerets over tinker and time vault (Anything with welders).   

But lets be honest, how big of a thread IS jesters cap?

[Bongo]

Assuming I didn't draw any of those pieces, a Cap would only be annoying, since I can still win with Tezzeret. Compare this to Painter, Pitchlong or Drain Tendrils, where a resolved Cap would end the game immediately.

But yeah, I don't think Cap is a big thread, I just wanted to mention it.

[Neonico]

Tezzeret bringing up to 5 moxen + Untaping once + Attacking for the win is a really good alternate option....
I tend to often win without comboing allready with tezzeret....

[Anusien]

Why is adding redundant combo pieces (Painter's Servant/Grindstone) better than just adding more Tezzerets?  Tez is at least a bigger threat.  If extra Tez are Jester's Cap protection, just run more of them, no?

[Bongo]

Because Tezzeret is fundamentally a late-game card. Including the Painter combo gives you more strategic options, since you can cast the combo very early. Multiple Tezzeret is also I don't want to see, especially in my starting hand.

-----

Another big advantage of Thirst over Intu/AK is the option to include some Goblin Welders in the board, which I'm doing right now. They allow you to better use Thirst and help immensely against Stax and Workshop Aggro.

[Bongo]

Sorry for the double-post, but I've made some important changes to the maindeck and sideboard.

First, I added 1 Fact or Fiction in the maindeck. I wanted another draw-spell besides Thirst and Ancestral, and Fact is one of the best Drain mana sinks. I cut one Painter for it, as I found 2 copies to be sufficient, especially with Academy Ruins. I also considered Deep Analysis, but I liked FoF better because of its instant speed and the fact that it's better without Mana Drain.

My current sideboard looks like this:

3 Thoughtseize
2 Ingot Chewer
2 Extirpate
2 Goblin Welder
2 Sower of Temptation
1 Platinum Angel
1 Trinisphere
1 Sphere of Resistance
1 Gaea's Blessing


Thoughtseize & Spheres are there to combat Storm, which this deck has difficulties with. Welder is nice against Workshops and Sliver, and interacts nicely with Thirst.
The deck has game against the entire field, the only matchup where I had some difficulties was Storm (which was a lot better post-board). The only matchup I couldn't test was Fish, does anybody have testing results?

[M.Solymossy]

Because Tezzeret is fundamentally a late-game card. Including the Painter combo gives you more strategic options, since you can cast the combo very early. Multiple Tezzeret is also I don't want to see, especially in my starting hand.

-----

Another big advantage of Thirst over Intu/AK is the option to include some Goblin Welders in the board, which I'm doing right now. They allow you to better use Thirst and help immensely against Stax and Workshop Aggro.

First, a Tezzeret deck should be a "fundamentally late-game" deck.  Including the painter combo gives you more dead cards.  Because lets be honest, Red Elemental Blast is dead against a LOT of decks right now, and painter itself is godawful.  Same with grindstone.  There is no reason to play a combo.  This is like if pitchlong would run tinker-mindslaver.  See my point?


Wait wait, how DOESN'T intuition do retarded things with Welder?

[Bongo]

While I appreciate your input, your arguments are not backed up by evidence and come off as rather aggressive.

Red Elemental Blast is very good even without Painter in the current metagame. If you take a look at the most played cards, Force of Will, Mana Drain and the usual suspects are very high on the list. Obviously, with Painter in play, Blasts are never dead.
Painter makes your Blasts awesome, helps Force (although that goes both ways) and is an excellent blocker for Dark Confidant and other 2-power guys. The only suboptimal card without support is Grindstone.
Including the combo gives you a lot of options you don't have without it. Please reread my opening post.

I never said that Intuition doesn't interact nicely with Welder. The problem is that you're running only 2 Intuitions, and the first one searches up AK most of the time, leaving you only 1 Intuition to abuse Welder with.

[nineisnoone]

I posted this in another thread, but why is tutoring out Time Vault better than tutoring out Painter and then Grindstone?  Painter enables REB, and it can block for Tezzert while you wait for the turn.  Tezzeret is still alive if they play Stifle, so it just delays a turn.  They can't counter the search, because it's not a spell.  If they were going to play artifact destruction, so there's no reason for them not to play it on their turn and give you an untap.  With that in mind the 3 mana is pretty much irrelevant because they should have done what they were going to do before you searched out for Grindstone anyways.  I suppose you Drain on 2 mana and and Grindstone takes 3, so you can be in situations where you can't activate it? 

[rikimaru75]

I've been running a version of this that uses:

2 Grindstone
3 Painter's Servant
1 Voltaic Key
2 Tezzeret
1 Time Vault

Through most of my practices with the deck, by the time I'm ready to cast tezzeret, I usually have one of either of the combo pieces in play.  It also seems to be a good deceptive strategy in some respects, because your opponent might not know which 'type' of deck you're playing until G2.

[Sporkcore]

I know this topic hasn't been talked about in quite a while, but since the deck was in the Philly T4 not too long ago, I think it deserves a second look.


Austin Pollack: Tezzeret Painter

1 Demonic Tutor
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Tinker
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Pyroblast
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Grindstone
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Voltaic Key
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Mox Emerald
1 Brainstorm
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Academy Ruins
1 Sol Ring
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Time Vault
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Magus of the Unseen
2 Island
4 Force of Will
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
4 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Painter's Servant
3 Mana Drain
2 Flooded Strand
3 Volcanic Island
3 Polluted Delta
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Underground Sea

SB:
2 Extirpate
1 Magus of the Unseen
3 Duress
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Platinum Angel
1 Trinisphere
2 Sower of Temptation
1 Mindslaver
2 Goblin Welder
1 Darkblast


This was the list I used to T4. I have to say, it was absolutely amazing. The only changes to the deck that I have made have been taking out the MD and SB Magus of the Unseen and the MD Gorilla shaman. While both could have been useful, they were mostly underwhelming due to the fact that by the time I would cast either of them, either the game was locked up by me, or they would be killed.

In their MD places, I put in a Sundering Titan and an Echoing Truth.

While not good in the LI meta (there are way too many Workshops), the Titan is better in places like New England where you have more decks with similar mana bases. If I get to play in a LI tournament again, the Titan will probably end up a Darksteel Colossus. The Echoing Truth was something I wished I had all tournament long to take care of things like multiple Sphere effects, Oath targets and welders.

The SB Magus, I made into a Triskelion for the aggro match as well as if I have to deal with opposing welders.

I know the argument is there as to why have both Painter's combo and Tezz in the same deck, but it works really well. Going off with one of them means you can board out that combo for the other two games which forces your opponent to make bad SB choices since they're expecting that combo again. Even dropping a Painter, then a Tezz means that you can use Tezz as an additional tinker to find the Grindstone.

While playing, I tended to treat the deck as neither a Tezz deck or a Painter deck, but a Vault/key deck. The majority of my games were won by getting Time Vault and Voltaic key and going infinite and just using those turns to find either win condition. The maindeck blasts were great to be additional disruption against the blue based decks that I played against, since I think I only named Blue once with Painter and that was when I had two ReBs in hand and my opponents only relevant mana source was a Mox Jet that I nuked.

For the AK/Thirst argument that has been coming up a lot lately, I've preferred the Thirst for Knowledge's due to the Slaver transformational board (which was amazing). Thirsts were better for the welders, letting me put into play any big artifacts I discarded like Platy Angel and when I Yawg Willed, the random moxes I discarded made me wish there was either an Empty the Warrens or Tendrils of Agony in the deck to storm off with. I also can't forget that Thirst's "drawback" is almost completely negated by the Academy Ruins in the deck.

Gifts Ungiven was ridiculous in the deck. I can't remember any time I cast it that I didn't win. I would never play Fact or Fiction over this card. Gifting for Painter/DT/Vamp or mystical/Tinker is a win and if you already have Time Vault out or Walk in hand, you can replace the painter for Tezz and use whatever to find Voltaic Key.

All in all, this is the deck I'll be playing in tournaments. It seems like a cluttered deck, but it works very well and has won me a Library and a Mox Jet, so I'm happy with the results.

[honestabe]

I'd consider adding another Divining Top