Tortoise Format Challenge #2

[Alfred]

Good point thorme. Let's see where the wishes go.

[mdw]

The peacekeeper gives the oozes a p/t of more than 1, but it can't be sacrificed after the oozes enter play due to the 0cc of tokens.

Tokens created by soul foundry are copies of the card, they follow the same rules as Clone, Copy Artifact, or any other copy effect, the soul foundry created ooze tokens have a cc of 7.

[Albatross]

Minor rules note:

The Burning Wish + Mirari for a Burning Wish and a random sorcery idea doesn't work unless you can target a B. Wish in your sideboard. Since it is restricted, the B. Wish idea won't work as listed. Ring of Ma'Ruf and Golden Wish might do the trick.

[combo_dude]

Minor rules note:

The Burning Wish + Mirari for a Burning Wish and a random sorcery idea doesn't work unless you can target a B. Wish in your sideboard. Since it is restricted, the B. Wish idea won't work as listed. Ring of Ma'Ruf and Golden Wish might do the trick.

In which case, before SBs get officially restricted, does this work?

Wizards' School
Sand Silos
Leviathan
Phyrexian Altar
Golden Wish
Mirari
Disturbed Burial

SB includes 210-odd enchantments, including 1 Battle of Wits, 1 Ring of Ma'ruf, and 1 Temporal Cascade (I know it's a sorcery...)

This one works as follows:
1) Make mana with Sand Silos.
2) Play Leviathan and Mirari.
3) Produce W with Wizards' School, then another W with Leviathan and 6 from Sand Silos for Golden Wish, Mirari'ing it.
4) Wish for Ring of Ma'ruf and another enchantment (nothing that recurs the graveyard though).
5) Fetch Golden Wish with Ring of Ma'ruf.
6) Disturbed Burial for the Leviathan.
7) Rinse and repeat until you can discard enough to leave you with a 200 card deck.

Eventually the win is to Wish for Battle and Cascade, then build up and Cascade the cards back into the deck. Wins.

Is there a huge hole here, or have I broken the wishes entirely? I don't think you can win any faster, and this involves a much bigger mana investment than the other Wish decks due to the WW being as heavy a requirement as R.

[virtual]

"I hate to sound skeptical, but wishes totally break this format of its limited # of cards requirement.  That's really kinda the point, at least in the last one when I actually participated.  Just coming up with huge ungainly combos doesn't seem like as much of a challenge, as when you have 7 cards total to deal with.   Maybe my opinion doesn't matter as much since I haven't participated much.  Also, in no legal format can you have a sideboard that is >15 cards, so a sideboard of 200+ cards seems ridiculous to me =).  

Maybe tortise #3 will just be the same banning wishes.  What will people break next.

Just my 3c, can I have change?
-Virtual

[wonkey_donkey]

Nice deck, combo_dude, would be even better with morality shift rather than temporal cascade.

I'd say that the challenge is somewhat spoiled by the wishes+210 card sideboard... back to the drawing board with no wishes or Ring of Ma'ruf, I think.

EDIT: New deck idea that doesn't use wishes. It also works as intended, I think, unlike my previous concoction which I discovered didn't after checking on crystalkeep.com (*nods to jacob orlove and mdw*). The rules issue here is whether sacrificing a creature in play to Malevolent Awakening will mean that it can then be returned to my hand - I think it can be, but I'm not positive. Here it is.

Black Lotus
Upwelling
Leviathan
Malevolent Awakening
Wizard School/Koskun Keep
Soul Net/Tangleroot
Test of Endurance/Sparkcaster

The slashes indicate that I'm not sure which configuration is best for the deck. Other kills are definitely possible, although the core of the deck (the first 4 cards) are much less flexible. Maybe using the RG depletion land, celestial prism, and dingus staff is even slower than the configurations above. Any thoughts on improving the deck?

tom

[Alfred]

"Binge and Purge"

Black lotus
upwelling
cunning wish
phyrexian altar
mirari
breeding pit
R/B depletion land

SB:
cunning wish
psychic purge
coffin purge

Just get enough blue mana through breeding pit and altar to constantly recur psychic purge. Also remember that the perfect player would fork the psychic purge.

[combo_dude]

You can't use a red depletion land - you then don't have access to Black mana for Breeding Pit.

However, isn't the deck better with Golden Wishes, and using Ring of Ma'ruf, Steamclaw, and Pyromania in the SB? Then the deck Wishes and Miraris for Steamclaw and Ring, plays and uses the Ring (returning Golden Wish), and then plays the following loop:

Play Pyromania, use it, Steamclaw it away, Wish for Ring and Pyromania, play + use Pyromania, Steamclaw it, Ring for Wish, Wish for Ring and Pyromania...

I think this is slower as you can't Mirari the kill condition, and you need a ridiculous number of tokens to create all the necessary White and Red mana. However, you can save up, drop Breeding Pit, and after enough creatures hit play you can win in one turn.

EDIT: Sorry, I read "storage lands" for depletion lands (*smacks self on head*); I'd forgotten they existed...for my deck, the UB depletion land would be the way to go. As a result, I'm not even going to begin to try and calculate this deck's optimal turn - the stack of mana, both coloured and colourless, is too confusing.

I think that we need to ban the Wishes - they keep your hand fundamentally at 7 cards with a 3-card SB, but using this Golden Wish/Mirari/Ring combo is too easy. It slows the deck down by hundreds of turns.

[Jacob Orlove]

Yeah, I seem to have broken the format. Let's lose the wishes.

[thorme]

Yeah, I seem to have broken the format. Let's lose the wishes.

Should we ban wishes, just say that there are no sideboards?  The second option leaves wishes as an option if you can build a deck around removing cards from game and wishing them back, but keeps the wishes from being card advantage.  Let me know your thoughts...I'd love to keep the banned list as small as possible.

[wonkey_donkey]

Sounds better than bannings, I must say. props to jacob for creativity, though.

Tom

[combo_dude]

Actually, I agree with Jacob - losing the Wishes is better. I'm sure you can MD a Mirari-Golden Wish-Ring of Ma'ruf (aren't I being creative here)-Pyromania-Steamclaw-storage land-A.N.Other Card to make a pretty slow deck. It really does make for boring decks.

Alternatively, would banning Mirari work? This does stifle creativity a lot, as Mirari (I feel sure) is eminently breakable without the Wishes, but would mean that Wishes are no longer broken.

Thorme - your thoughts?

So that the post has more of a point, here is a deck that might work:

Test of Endurance
Phyrexian Reclamation
Leviathan
Black Lotus
Worthy Cause
Grand Coliseum
Upwelling

(Life total in brackets)
Turn 2: Upwelling (20)
Turn 3: Phyrexian Reclamation (19)
Turn 7: Test of Endurance (17)

Turn 16: Leviathan (13)
Turn 19: Worthy Cause (12+10 = 22)
Turn 21: Reclaim the Leviathan (19)

Repeat this 14-turn cycle, gaining 2 life (first losing 5, then gaining 10, then losing 3 - net 2 life) each time, until you jump from 45 down to 40 and up to 50, which, adding one on to win and subtracting 2 for not paying the final Worthy Cause buyback, I add up to make a total of  13 cycles of 14 turns = 182, +6 = 188 turns.

If I can find a way of dealing myself one more damage on each cycle, then that would slow the deck down a huge amount. Unfortunately, City of Brass does too much damage, even with Animal Boneyard instead of Worthy Cause (same applies to a card like Tarnished Citadel).

EDIT: Realised shortly after I'd posted - Peacekeeper/School of the Unseen/Disturbed Burial over Leviathan/Grand Colisuem/Reclamation. This needs a 19-turn cycle (put 7WWB in your mana pool, then play, sacrifice, and return - that is 7 turns colourless and 12 turns to generate coloured mana), and only nets one life at a time. This means:

(Life total in brackets)
Turn 1: Upwelling
Turn 9: Test of Endurance

Turn 28: Peacekeeper
Turn 28: Worthy Cause
Turn 28: Disturbed Burial the Leviathan

which gives a kill turn of (29x28)+16 = 828. Any good, or is it flawed?

[thorme]

Alternatively, would banning Mirari work? This does stifle creativity a lot, as Mirari (I feel sure) is eminently breakable without the Wishes, but would mean that Wishes are no longer broken.

Thorme - your thoughts?


So that the post has more of a point, here is a deck that might work:

Test of Endurance
Phyrexian Reclamation
Leviathan
Black Lotus
Worthy Cause
Grand Coliseum
Upwelling


EDIT: Realised shortly after I'd posted - Peacekeeper/School of the Unseen/Disturbed Burial over Leviathan/Grand Colisuem/Reclamation.

which gives a kill turn of (29x28)+16 = 828. Any good, or is it flawed?

Not sure I'm ready to ban Mirari.  I think Tortoise 3 will have no sideboards, no wishes, no upwelling, and no storage lands.  The Upwelling and Storage lands are omnipresent, and it will be interesting to see what folks can do w/o them.

For your deck, I like it!  828 is quite good for a non-wish deck.


Here is my current pet project, but alas, I cannot seem to get rid of that last card.  That's right:  the list as it stands has 8 cards.  

Help me get this down to 7!

1 Mishra's Workshop
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Moss Diamond
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Upwelling
1 Soul Foundry
1 Draco
1 Epic Struggle

So close, and yet so far...