Foghat (Helm of Obedience + TPS)

[nineisnoone]

4   Polluted Delta
2   Bloodstained Mire   
2   Island   
2   Swamp      
2   Underground Sea

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

4   Dark Ritual      
2   Cabal Ritual      

4   Force of Will
3   Misdirection

4   Leyline of the Void
1   Helm of Obedience

1   Ancestral Recall
1   Brainstorm   
1   Ponder
1   Chain of Vapor
1   Mystical Tutor
1   Imperial Seal
1   Vampiric Tutor
1   Merchant Scroll   
1   Demonic Tutor   
2   Grim Tutor      
1   Timetwister
1   Tinker      
1   Rebuild
1   Yawgmoth's Will
1   Necropotence   
1   Tendrils of Agony
1   Gifts Ungiven
1   Memory Jar   
1   Yawgmoth's Bargain

It's mostly a TPS list that I butchered to put in Storm + Helm (fog + hat).

I've always seen the Leyline-Helm combo in Shop style decks... which I've never understood.  Dark Ritual gives you plenty of acceleration if you need it and Leyline can't even be played with Shop mana. 

You have 8 ways to search for your Helm, so it should be easy enough to find.  And with Rituals both Helm and Leyline are easy enough to play.

Leyline itself is a fine disruption card.  If it is your opening hand Leyline is especially fearsome.  In addition to disruption opposing graveyard strategies, it allows you to win with just one more card.  Lastly, it avoids hate in an extremely efficient way.  A single Chain on a DSC put it into your hand, basically unplayable.  Whereas a Leyline or Helm is easy enough to re-cast.

Trading DSC for Helm gives you an win-now situation as opposed to requiring two more turns.  It also fulfills the same purpose as DSC would in that it avoids storm hate. 

Mana Drain also gives you the option of getting a few mana to help power out a Leyline or Helm.  I'm not especially sure of it's inclusion here as there is no instant speed card draw, but I really found out much preferred FoW over Duress in this deck so I needed something to keep my blue count up.  Are there any other ideas?

I've been playing the deck a bit and have been quite pleased.  I don't feel the typical TPS route is all that affected by the changes I have made, and frequently an opening Leyline has made weak hands much stronger.

[mr.grim]

It seems like a good fit in a tps shell.
I wonder if tezz/vault . could fit in some where.Or key/ vault.
How do you feel taking out some of the draw sevens for more bounce
Maybe drop jar and necro for hurks recall and a echoing truth.

I think i would still want to see duress in it ..
like cut drains and one l.o.t.v for three duress or thoughtseiz.

[covetousrat]

COMBO
1 Helm of Obedience
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Voltaic Key
1 Time Vault

MANA
4 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Tolarian Academy

1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
5 Moxes
1 Black Lotus
4 Dark Ritual

PROTECTION
4 Duress
3 Thoughtseize
1 Echoing Truth

GOOD STUFF
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoths Will
1 Senseis Divining Top
1 Ponder
1 Brainstorm
3 Thirst of Knowledge
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tinker
1 Time walk
1 Fact or Fiction

TUTORS
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Tezzerat

CREATURE
1 DSC

SIDEBOARD
1 Thoughtseize
2 Pithing Needle
2 Extirpate
2 Hurkyls Recall
2 Tormods Crypt
3 Thrashing Wumpus
1 Massacre
1 Darkblast
1


Hi this is my fun version of leyline+helm and timevault+voltaic key. Its from my post VV Void Vault. This is more to the controlling side of combo with 7 duress effects. This deck can be pretty explosive at times and can be the control side too. Basically just lead with a duress effect and go from there.

[nineisnoone]

@covetousrat:
I don't see your Tendrils (or even considering that it doesn't seem to really be very strong storm deck).  If that's the case, I don't really see the need for the Dark Rituals... which ultimately suggest a complete stylistic change to the deck.

Though it's definitely made me think about spashing the Leyline/Helm combo into a Drain-Tezzeret Shell.  Your list very much looks like a good start!

It seems like a good fit in a tps shell.
I wonder if tezz/vault . could fit in some where.Or key/ vault.
How do you feel taking out some of the draw sevens for more bounce
Maybe drop jar and necro for hurks recall and a echoing truth.

I think i would still want to see duress in it ..
like cut drains and one l.o.t.v for three duress or thoughtseize.

I don't really see Tezz/Key/Vault working into the deck.  Tezz is double blue which makes it hard to play off Rituals (need at least 3 color mana sources).  And both Key and Vault do not do something on their own (unlike Leyline).  Cutting into the deck to add another win-condition I think would cut too much into the standard Storm win condition.  And I much prefer storm over Tezzeret.

That being said, I could change the deck to being a Tezzert + Leyline/Helm combo deck.  But I don't think there is enough room to play Storm/Tezzeret/Helm in the same deck.  But again, Tezzert + Leyline/Helm seems like an interesting fit as well.  I actually would go the Painter/Grindstone path.

The problem with cutting Drains or anything blue for black, is that I am very light on blue cards for FoW.  And I much prefer FoW than Duress here.  I had cut them both and put in Duress/Seize, but I just found myself missing FoW too much... almost enough to want to run PoN... but not quite enough.

But yeah... I really want FoW in this deck.

[mr.grim]

force i think is a must.
i was also wondering about the painter idea ,if you try it let me know how it works. Negate might be a good idea due to the one blue.

[Nehptis]

I love the Helm / LL combo.  But, never have I felt that it is better than anything else out there:

The all in build is slower and less consistent than Belcher.
The TPS style build is slower and less consistent than TPS.
A Control Build with Drain begs for Tezz which then is worse than the Tezz decks that have been dominating the format.

Good luck though, I hope we can find some build that works.

[nineisnoone]

Made some changes.  I cut a land, from the TPS i was working on and regretted it so added it back.  Mana Drain was fairly useless, so I just cut the 4x Drains for 3x Misdirections and the 12th land.

I don't really feel the deck has lost much (if at all) speed due to adding Helm/Leyline.  The loss of DSC is significant, but you still always have Jar to Tinker for.  But then again, I'm not an expert TPS player so I might not be playing optimally in any case.

With my deck as it is, I basically trade DSC for Helm, Duress for Leyline, and Desire/Time Walk for Misdirection 2-3.  I've never been a huge Desire/Walk fan, but they could come in for the Misdirections.  I just prefer the added Misdirections because my disruption base is somewhat iffy at the moment:

Either Misdirections to have blues and added disruption for FoW, Desire/Walk and rely on just your FoW, or forget about FoW and just go for Duress/Seize.

The biggest problem I've found with Leyline/Helm is not necessarily that it is slower (though perhaps this plays into that) but is the fact that multiple Leylines are pretty much useless.  Once you have one of them, all other Leylines are pretty much useless.  The thing is going under 4 Leylines would seriously make me question whether its worth making the changes at all. 

[salthecarp]

If you're going to play 4 Leylines and Dark Rituals, Ill-Gotten Gains might be a card worth considering. It's hard to say what you could cut for that, but it would probably wind up being blue and leave you a little too low on blue cards for Force of Will.

[Oath of Happy]

One thing that I like about Leyline and Helm over painters/other combos, is that the cards are usefull on their own.  Have you considered using 2 Helms 4 leyline, with Colossus as the alternate kill and putting it into a Drain deck with either 0 or 1 Dark Ritual?

[nineisnoone]

I'm sort of thinking about a Drain-shell for the deck.  I don't know if I'd run the 2nd Helm but the DSC is something I'd like to even add to the Ritual-Shell deck.  I don't know what the main angle will be Tezz/Vault or Painters.  Maybe even go for Slaver, since Welder could work with Helm.

[mr.grim]

With the misdirections and forces,i think you really should add painter and grind stone .It's a alt. win condition and helps make those non blues,blue.

[nineisnoone]

With the misdirections and forces,i think you really should add painter and grind stone .It's a alt. win condition and helps make those non blues,blue.

Where do you think the cuts should go?

The main problem with Leyline/Helm + Grindstone/Painter's is that to really take advantage of Painters you need to run blue for REB and Pyroblast.  And that puts me in 3 colors, making it difficult to play the double black cost on Leyline since Blue and Red are much more important to the deck.

[bisamratte]

Ever thought of playing Ill Gotten Gains? There are some nice plays together with Leyline.

[nineisnoone]

I hadn't really considered Ill-Gotten Gains. 

Are you thinking something in the vein of Iggy-Pop in Legacy?  It just seems like it is too expensive as a 4 mana symmetric card that only is really good when Leyline is out. 

[salthecarp]

I think you could probably fit in at least a single Ill-Gotten Gains as a secondary powered down Yawgmoth's Will that can often turn into a devastating Mind Twist in the early game, even without Leyline. Including more than one would start to take the deck pretty far outside the typical vintage tendrils decks and would probably require a major restructuring. It wouldn't really be TPS anymore but it might be worth trying. If you went that way, Lion's Eye Diamond, Intuition and maybe even infernal tutor could be worth a look.