That list would heavily benefit from Land Grant and Chrome Mox. Grant increases the ability of your draw cards to benefit you, Mox has 44 targets, you can increase storm with either of them for 0-mana.
Drop city of solitude and Gemstone for Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual. Why? Because you want the opportunity to go off T1 on good draws, but either way; you want live cards. You're trying to go off.
TES is successful because of 1-mana disruption to protect it's combo; Unless you too use low mana disruption you'll only go off T4+ which means you're dead.
IMO the biggest portion of the combo is Natural Balance + Squandered Resources. You get a ritual + mox hand, squader, balance, infernal contract, go off. Consider a Gaea's Balance or some such to recycle your graveyard so Natural isn't dead, but without leaving yourself with too many lands in the deck.
With good hands I could even in this Build go of turn 2 (even if it's hard, but possible).
Imagine: Mine, Spirit Guide, Squandered Resources, Balance, Bloom, Swamp, Contract, enables T2 combo.
even if I cut the Mine's to get Land grant, I still have 16 lands so the risk of Grant being dead is relatively high, also maybe you don't wanna show what your going to do, do you?
The build with Dark/Cabal with Mox could suggest your opponent to be Spanish inquisition...
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"Master they threatened to darken the sky with their arrows!"
"Well, then we will at least fight in the shadow"
"There is no glory to be gained in the kingdom of the dead!"
Post by Narah about unbanning Mind Twist in legacy and that this would be evil:
Yeah, but it's really more "Disney Evil" than practical. It's like being a bond villain and giving a monologue rather then just shooting them.
If you want to play on MTGO add me I'm HeskatetAS, playing Modern and Legacy
I think that slicing this together with the old style Yagmoth's Bargin deck my work. Use Soul Spike and Needlebite Trap for the life advantage along with some sort of card draw (that I can't think of). That being the case they double as the card draw and kill condition.
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"You can't stop the signal, Mel." - Mr. Universe
If wizards would print a green, black and white version of Hydroblast and Blue Elemental Blast Painter could be done in every color.
Hello,
i do actually enjoy cadaverous bloom and i wanted to build a deck out of it but it seems just so inconsistent for many reason. When i'am building a combo deck by my own (with the decked app.) i ask my self 3 big questions.
1- Do you have counter or disrupt (yes -> makes you're deck more resilient.) (no-> what then ?) P.S : more than 3 counters...
2 - so he has no disrupt/counter (how fast is it ?) (for me a T3 kill is like the minimum.) (if not what then ?)
3- what do i have against faster combo ?
it was slow, like turn 3-4 but i had against "ANT"
twin cast and fork to copy a tendril and/or i had some trinisphere because the deck supported a trinisphere with all the artifact accelerator i had in the deck.
now i don't say that my advice are gold, but it "worked" for me till now, the 2 last deck i built was on final and win both. But i wont boast it was a 18 players tournament :D:D:D:D:D
Anyway my final sentence is :
if you're not running something that can keep up with or annoy "Tier deck" it's not even worth trying. (discard, counter, silence effect, mana disrupt, tax effect.)
Interesting ! I saw that enchantment and i had this idea, but i missed the whole deck design. So i was pondering about making it like a nick fit or something.
Now it's about two days that i am goldfishing and it works decently i am quite happy and i am sure there is some modification to do, that's why i wont fully commit and put the list yet. But if people are interested for me putting that list in here i will.
This is a very old thread now, but with Khans of Tarkir I see a fun, if less consistent, win condition: Villainous Wealth, and one that works very nicely with Memory Lapse. Titania, Protector of Argoth is also a possible alternative win condition.
For card draw, Titania builds can profit from Life's Legacy, and this can perhaps replace Infernal Contract. Re the Prosperity vs. Blue Sun's Zenith, Braingeyser is legal in Legacy and is superior to both.
Prosperity was a superior option (to Braingeyser for instance) simply because the deck counted each and every point of mana--blue was a commodity--oftentimes generating just enough mana to slay your opponent with nothing left over. (Plus for a time, Braingeyser was banned/restricted).
This deck does not go infinite. So Blue Sun's Zenith with it's UUU is actually a hindrance and I'm not certain we want the spell to be recycled into the library.
Blue mana remains a restriction since Cadaverous Bloom can't generate it. However, I think multicolour mana fixing is now strong enough to allow it - the deck can still use Undiscovered Paradise, and Squandered Resources can still double your blue. A lot of the newer win conditions, from Banefire to Villainous Wealth, lack Drain Life's 'only black mana' restriction. So Braingeyser is probably a better card for modern Prosbloom decks, especially since it is a real concern that, as mentioned by the poster you replied to, power levels are higher now than once they were.
And while Prosbloom is a great name for a deck, Brainbloom is even better.
Metagame is extremely important and with more cards granting "life spiffs" it creates a deeper issue for a deck that relies on generating 20-24 mana in the first few rounds, just enough to kill an opponent at 20-life. The flipside of this, of course, is fetch and other pain lands, which means ProsBloom could conceivably go off sooner in instances where your opponent hurts himself. (Subsequent rounds, however, would most likely lose this advantage.)
I'll vote once again for Villainous Wealth. On average you're probably putting more value into play for every point of X than 1 damage from Drain Life, some of those threats may be persistent if you happen to grab permanents (no, you don't need Emrakul in your deck, but having it in the other guy's is nice), you're denying cards to the opponent and - if you do pull it off for 20-24 mana - even if you don't get great value you're still in with a chance of decking him. It's one of the most versatile win conditions this deck can run with.
The primary things I see holding back a deck like this today isn't disruption, but rather:
Agreed. If nothing else, Force of Will and/or other free counters can be added to the deck or sideboard.
1. You die instantly, not at the end of a phase (as was the case back before 6th edition rules) which means your infernal contract and other life loss makes you extremely susceptible to cheap burn
Not insurmountable with alternate card draw options - e.g. Life's Legacy in a deck with some creature generation.
2. Tutors - in order for this to win you must find the kill card. Like I mentioned, it doesn't necessarily draw itself out to win, especially if you have the ability to go off on turn 3 or 4. Are there better options, similar to Vampiric Tutor?
There's Beseech the Queen from Shadowmoor, which can at least grab Squandered Resources early. Liliana Vess is a later option but potentially repeatable. But the best bet is probably to join the herd and run with Dig Through Time - Cadaverous Bloom and Squandered Resources are both excellent delve engines.
EDIT: Scratch that, I misread the 2/B hybrid symbol as 2 life/B (not very familiar with either Shadowmoor or New Phyrexia, but knew the latter mechanic existed) which would have made Beseech the Queen an essentially mana-free Tutor. As it is it's too slow and conditional for a Bloom deck. And once you hit 4 mana you may as well go with Diabolic Tutor or - and given that this deck draws so many cards it may be a stronger option - Abundance
Also, it was mentioned that Brainstorm is simply better than Impulse -- and this debate has raged since Ice Age
Since Visions, surely (when Impulse was first printed)?
- and typically Brainstorm is. However, the extra card, plus the ability to drop duplicates to the bottom of the deck makes Impulse superior in this deck. The exception comes when facing hand destruction, obviously the brainstorm can help protect your hand.
One new entry into the running in this deck may be Taigam's Scheming, which while it doesn't draw cards itself doesn't really need to in this deck, since the draw engine is so powerful; on the other hand, it's almost strictly inferior to Lim-Dul's Vault in a deck that has access to ready black mana and doesn't particularly need cards in the graveyard. It can be very helpful for stacking a draw and semi-tutoring; the main argument against is that Dig Through Time is just better, although that does require UU. In this deck, Brainstorm fills the Three Wishes/Ideas Unbound role more than the Impulse role.
How do you cast banefire? You have no red sources. Need lotus petals.
If Banefire was a great win condition, the original Prosbloom decks would have used Kaervek's Torch. Banefire's a cute way to win, but it's going off-colour in a deck that has no need to; countering their counters is the better play. Cards like Villainous Wealth and Banefire have an inherent advantage over Drain Life in that the deck can then run Drain Power as a way to disrupt the opponent, and add the resulting mana to the X spell finisher.
I searched through the newer cards and tried to figure a way out to get the job done.
My main problems where that your Natural Balance only fetches basic lands but you have to built a mana base which supports a 3 colored deck.
Crucible of Worlds might be the answer, since you can play lands directly from the graveyard, but it doesn't give you five lands into play at once. In a Titania build of the sort I suggested, she also brings lands back into play from the yard. If the sticking point is the lack of one specific colour, both cards are good answers. There's also the ever-dependable Life from the Loam, but you may not want to risk dredging combo pieces away.
EDIT: Here's a quick idea I put together - it's a draft list, without a breakdown of the basic lands and with perhaps one or two few lands, but that can be corrected at need (Kruphix, God of Horizons is a definite indulgence, but if Bloom is more for fun than competition these days, why not? Mistcutter Hydra is an alternate win condition that should probably be sideboarded rather than maindecked as it fails, or is at least rather slow, against decks with non-blue creatures. The absence of Natural Balance is due purely to the fact that Channel Fireball was out of them when I looked at the availability of the cards I needed,and this might be fatal to this particular deck). The lands are the ones I have rather than the ones that are optimal, so no Bayou or Tropical Island, and only one Polluted Delta (my others are in my Standard deck).
If Banefire was a great win condition, the original Prosbloom decks would have used Kaervek's Torch. Banefire's a cute way to win, but it's going off-colour in a deck that has no need to; countering their counters is the better play. Cards like Villainous Wealth and Banefire have an inherent advantage over Drain Life in that the deck can then run Drain Power as a way to disrupt the opponent, and add the resulting mana to the X spell finisher.
The deck was edited. At the time I wrote this message, his deck had no way to produce red mana.
I've been theory-testing my deck idea, particularly to try and get around the lack of Natural Balance and, to a slightly lesser extent, Vampiric Tutor (replacements, whether Rhystic, Dig Through Time etc., all have the limitation that they can't fetch a Squandered Resources in time for a turn 2 play).
Natural Balance not being in the deck slows the combo, and perhaps most importantly means you have very restricted sources of blue mana once you've used Resources. This makes Mistcutter Hydra a more attractive (but fundamentally less fun) win condition than Villainous Wealth if running Braingeyser, since a Braingeyser-Braingeyser-Wealth play will be tough to pull off. With that in mind I'll probably put Prosperity back in the deck in place of Braingeyser; the downside being the obvious tension between Wealth and giving your opponent card draw. Hydra also really needs to be at traditional X spell values for a Bloom deck (i.e. 20+), which is less viable without Natural Balance; Villianous Wealth can trigger at a much lower value; the maximum optimal value is probably 15 and lower against decks that don't run Emrakul.
Harmonize and Infernal Contract become more attractive card draw options for the same reason. To fuel the latter Lake of the Dead is worth investigating, as it gives more for the sacrificial buck than Squandered Resources. It also helps with the finisher, and it's rather strange the card never seems to have seen use in Prosbloom builds before (as it helps Drain Life too, and Alliances was Type 2-legal at the time. It may have been banned at the time, I don't recall).
In terms of actually generating the mana, Deathrite Shaman is an obviously good fit for the deck, and there's a B gap in the mana curve where Vampiric Tutor used to be. I even wondered whether Teferi's Isle might solve the blue mana limitation, but being unusable until it's been in play for 3 turns just makes it too slow. Lotus Vale could do the job, perhaps? Without Natural Balance, there's less of a need to have large numbers of basic lands in the deck.
That's a very good idea for some formulations of the deck; I still haven't worked out my land count, however I wonder whether I'll have enough islands to pull it off. I don't have the Tropical Island favoured by most versions of the deck list - then again I do have an Underground Sea, Breeding Pools, and both Polluted Delta and Bad River (which I'll probably add in since two of my three Polluted Deltas are currently in my Standard deck, and the original fetchland has proven good enough for the deck in its heyday) that can help in that regard.
The latest version I've developed (still minus lands) is:
Exploration seems a better fit for the deck than Explore since, while it isn't a cantrip, the deck has enough card drawing that multiple lands to be played and sacrificed to Resources/Shaman are likely to be drawn - with Deathrite and Resources together, and with the option for extra blue mana this way, playing and saccing is more efficient and versatile than pitching to Cadaverous Bloom, and it is never less so.
This deck in particular is one where the Dig Through Time vs. Treasure Cruise debate is pertinent. Superficially, Dig is the better card for a combo deck - however this particular deck values straight card draw more than most, being able to cast for only a single mana ups the final X spell count, and by the time you cast either your combo pieces will be in place (since you won't be delving unless you're saccing to Resources), so Treasure Cruise seems the correct choice.
I'll see how the deck performs both with Prosperity and with Braingeyser - if blue mana is reliably available to power the combo, I'll take out Prosperity again. Right now my Braingeysers are still on order so my first real trial of the deck will have to use Prosperity.
I replaced the Ponders, which I put in because the deck was short of a tutor, again because straight card draw seems the way to go with the deck and Infernal Contract is tried and tested in this role. I do like the idea of Ideas Unbound in the deck, but don't have any on hand. I also dropped Drain Power - it gave the deck useful disruption, but the idea is that the deck will go off fairly early (turn 4 is likely), in which case the mana added to the pool from Drain Power may do little more than cover the card's cost - it will still be in the sideboard.
In terms of lands, I wonder whether the Onslaught cycling lands may be viable in this deck? This deck rarely wants to pitch lands into the graveyard, but card draw is card draw.
EDIT: Since discovering this card in the latest Commander deck (though it's not a new card, and I was playing intermittently at the time, Mirrodin was such a tedious block - both gamewise and in terms of general characterlessness - I didn't develop a lasting memory of most of the cards), I've replaced one Infernal Contract with Promise of Power on a trial basis.
The reason Infernal Contract is still relevant in the deck today is that Bloom values card draw efficiency very highly, and almost all is costed so that drawing and pitching to Bloom will break even on your mana investment - Sign in Blood, for instance, costs a card you could have pitched to Bloom and BB for two cards that can net you only the same net mana you'd gain from throwing Sign in Blood itself. The same's true of Harmonize.
Pulling 8 mana's worth of cards for a card and three mana makes Contract one of the most efficient draw engines (only Ideas Unbound where you pitch everything before the forced discard or a 1 mana Treasure Cruise is more efficient). Promise of Power is almost as efficient, giving the same 3 mana net gain for a cost of 5 plus a card, but the extra 2 mana cost makes it harder to play early. For that reason I'm not sure it's as good an inclusion despite the lower cost in life that makes the deck more burn-resistant, since you're less likely to be able to use it before you have the combo in place (Lake of the Dead notwithstanding). On the other hand, in terms of actually drawing what you need 5 cards is better than 4, and those two extra mana may make the difference in getting an early kill when the combo is in place. While I expect I'll rarely if ever use it this way, following a Prosperity against a removal-light deck Promise can actually double as a finisher by using its demon-summoning effect instead of - or if mana permits as well as - the card draw. Probably 1 Promise vs. 3 Contract will prove to be correct.
Well what I was actually getting as was that high tide and omnitell do what pros bloom did but better. This includes the strengths of basic lands, protection, and dig spells while negating the need for another colour.
Basically I don't follow the desire to rebuild an old deck when newer versions already exist.
And just as another aside, I basically built this as enchantress, and even there it is win more.
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Well what I was actually getting as was that high tide and omnitell do what pros bloom did but better. This includes the strengths of basic lands, protection, and dig spells while negating the need for another colour.
That's a pretty broad definition of 'doing what prosbloom did'. Prosbloom ramped to a lot of mana, then killed with a finisher. That's generic enough that many, many decks work with the same strategy, and most super-ramp decks are combo-based. On that criterion Omni-Tell and Elves are much the same deck, only one uses Emrakul and the other Craterhoof Behemoth. You could if you want think of a wide variety of current Legacy decks as being essentially Prosbloom variants.
Basically I don't follow the desire to rebuild an old deck when newer versions already exist.
It's the same reason there are multiple decks to begin with. Decks like Omni-Tell and Elves are solved problems - they have pretty rigid deck lists and don't change much bar a Treasure Cruise here or there every few sets. There are a lot of good decks out there that don't see use any more and a lot of strong cards that see less use than they should (really, look at Squandered Resources. This card should be everywhere - it's hardly just a combo piece with Cadaverous Bloom, but is very effective mana acceleration for any quick deck. It's by far the most powerful card in the original Prosbloom deck, save only Vampiric Tutor. Back when the deck dominated Mirage block, Squandered Resources - not Vampiric - was the card that got banned. Yet it's never used any more). The basic combo pieces of Prosbloom are strong cards even today and it's tempting to return to it just because it is always on the cusp of playability. It hasn't been playable for years only because Vampiric Tutor has been banned and has never received a suitable replacement; nearly everything else about the deck remains strong. Even the post from last year on this thread that responded to the question about newer cards to replace elements of the original deck only presented about four possibilities, and one of those was a replacement for Bad River.
Prosbloom is also a fundamentally versatile shell - it can pick finishers from any of three colours (or any combination thereof), and with enough fixing conceivably even from another. That in itself makes it attractive for 'brewing' in a way High Tide never will be. Sure, Enchantress can use Banefire. It could use the Banefire analogue my design does - Mistcutter Hydra. Enchantress can't use Drain Life, and it can't use Villainous Wealth. The latter results in a deck that plays rather differently from the Banefire variant. Prosbloom can be readily adapted to use any of these finishers, up to and including Banefire (which is an obviously especially good fit with Cadaverous Bloom) for an Enchantress-like deck or Stroke of Genius for a High Tide analogue.
Sure, for me specifically Cadaverous Bloom and Squandered Resources are nostalgia nods to my Magic youth as well as being strong cards per se, but a lot of decks come about because people want to use specific cards and find the right shell, and I was looking more to find a home for Villainous Wealth initially than to resurrect Prosbloom (though that had been on my mind). Or just for a Legacy deck that isn't blue-led (though granted, making a competitive non-blue deck that's green-black led is not the most radical notion out there).
Well, if you were playing this back in the nineties, you should have a better beat on this deck than the rest of us...but I have a couple of suggestions.
I've tried Lim-Dul's Vault and, like Taigam's Scheming, the lack of a cantrip effect makes it hard to justify spending blue on it; it's also very much more restrictive than either Scheming or Impulse in what it gives you once the cycling is through.
For anyone still interested, my testing so far has identified the following that can help one or other formulation of the deck:
Card Draw
Sign in Blood is considerably worse than Ideas Unbound, but has the advantage that you can cast it free with a single pitch from Cadaverous Bloom. I'm running one copy alongside 3 Infernal Contracts and 1 Promise of Power 5 is a lot for this deck to pay for straight card draw and this card is still on probation; unlike Sign in Blood or Infernal Contract you can't usefully use it to set up the combo (without Lake of the Dead, but in testing the situations where that card adds meaningful value to the deck are too rare to justify its inclusion).
Without tutors, one mana is an important place to have your card draw. Brainstorm, Ponder, Serum Visions and Preordain all good replacements for Impulse - I'm currently using 4 Brainstorm and 3 Ponder.
Treasure Cruise is a valuable draw engine that firs in Bloom as well as it fits in every other Legacy deck with blue and lots of cheap sorceries and cantrips - which is to say, very well indeed. Extra fuel from land sacrifices makes it better still; with Lotus Vale (which also feeds it) and Cadaverous Bloom, you can chain a Cruise and a Braingeyser that pitches the cards just drawn. I've found builds with 2-4 Cruises are effective; the card's big rival, Dig Through Time, underperforms in Bloom, functioning as not much more than a conditional Sign in Blood that nets you two cards for UU.
Braingeyser: UU is a little difficult to chain, unlike Prosperity, but in my testing it's doable with this deck's availability of dual- and multi-lands.
Finishers
Villainous Wealth remains a favourite, fun win condition, but is harder to pull off than others in decks that run Braingeyser over Prosperity. While it can set you up for a pretty much certain win, and needs less mana to act as a finisher than Drain Life (usually 10-18 vs. 22) it's not usually going to kill straight away, and an alternate win condition is valuable at least in the sideboard since it does nothing against decks that rely on X spells to win themselves. Advantages are that it is effective with Memory Lapse and that it will often put persistent threats in play that makes it capable of beating lifegain decks.
Mistcutter Hydra is a more serious win condition, acting essentially the same way Banefire does and getting past blue irritants like True-Name Nemesis. It's pretty reliant on City of Solitude being in play to evade removal, and isn't suitable against creature-heavy decks that can block it. If it can't be removed or blocked it's much better than Drain Life or Banefire, since it can be cast at a smaller mana cost if needed and, as repeatable damage, decks with lifegain don't get the automatic win against you they do against traditional Bloom decks.
Titania, Protector of Argoth is an interesting supplementary finisher I have on probation in my sideboard. It has natural synergy with the deck, turning lands sacced to Squandered Resources or Lotus Vale, Gemstone Mines, Bad Rivers and Polluted Deltas et al all into elementals - and as a bonus bringing back a land that can then become an elemental itself.
Counterspells
Force of Will is no free counter in this deck, as the card you removed amounts to two mana. Then again, Memory Lapse costs two mana as well and you need to have said mana in hand. Ponders and Brainstorms lose enough value as the game goes on that you shouldn't be short of fuel for Force of Will.
Pact of Negation is risky if you're squandering your blue resources, but even if the game does go on for a further turn after you cast this, with Bloom and Resources you need only a single blue source in play and two cards in hand to pay its cost when the loan falls due.
Lands
Polluted Delta/Misty Rainforest/Verdant Catacombs: These cards are not, in fact, strictly superior to Bad River, since they have a life cost associated with their use and that can be important for this deck. As well as coming in three times as many relevant flavours as Bad River, however, they can set up a turn 1 spell Bad River can't - as such, Misty Rainforest and Polluted Delta are the important two here. I wouldn't use many of either, though, and because of the card draw available past turn 1 or 2 fetchlands lose their value quite quickly.
Tranquil Thicket/Barren Moor: I've found using these in small numbers to be very effective, as they give you turn 1 card draw without blue; at least once this has fetched me Squandered Resources in time for a turn 2 play.
Lotus Vale: In the land of the Cruise, the lotus farmer is king. I've found this a very effective addition, and the card is simply better overall now than it was in Weatherlight (in part because of Delve) as long as you side it out when faced with Wasteland. I only use one, because it is restrictive to play, but I like to play it to enable the final combo; the four blue mana you can net from it in a turn (with Resources) can chain two Braingeysers, or power a Cruise followed by a geyser, or in my build, Cruise followed by Geyser followed by Villainous Wealth.
Overgrown Tomb/Breeding Pool/Watery Grave: No Bloom deck really needs shocklands; even the original Bloom decks didn't use the full allowance of original duals available. But since most of us are on a budget they're a more available option these days, and Polluted Delta et al. make counting as a swamp or island more valuable than it was back in the day. A deck happy to play Bad River can equally happily play these tapped in any case.
Exploration I really don't like the fact that Explore costs two mana, for all that this deck is hungry for cantrips. With a fairly common opening of a Brainstorm in hand, a source of green mana, and a source of blue this accelerates the combo quite reliably. Playing, using and sacrificing a second land is never worse than pitching the same card to Bloom, and is obviously better if you need blue mana.
Squandered resources should not be everywhere. It really only was powerful because of natural balance and that card is also left behind in the power creep we see today. That confusion of yours I think is setting of warning bells for me.
Pros bloom ramped into cadaverous bloom to turn card draw into mana so a lethal drain life could be played. That is in essence what high tide and Omnitell do. You are creating a combo turn, your critical mass of spells needed to "go off." Again, the big difference being high tide/Omnitell are mono coloured and able to protect themselves while being immune to a lot of common hate.
There are a lot of decks out there that don't see play anymore for the very reason that their "powerful cards" are no longer good enough. That is why I keep pointing out the there are newer versions of prosbloom that are viable. The old style of prosbloom is unplayable with the current crop of decks and available card pool.
Fwiw I used tendrils of agony in enchantress. It was win more in the deck and I removed it after that tournament. Quite the opposite of what you are trying to do with prosbloom.
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Squandered resources should not be everywhere. It really only was powerful because of natural balance and that card is also left behind in the power creep we see today. That confusion of yours I think is setting of warning bells for me.
You're making the mistake of looking at the card only in the context in which it was used in Prosbloom. Natural Balance made the card a powerful one-turn combo engine; unlike Natural Balance itself - which, without a sacrifice outlet, is actually a rather poor card - Resources is a potent card in isolation. All it gets from Natural Balance is extra lands in play, and there are numerous newer ways of achieving the same result as well as cards like Crucible of Worlds that make lands in the graveyard less of a downside than they were when the card was printed (a reason Lotus Vale is also stronger now than it was back in Weatherlight). You might as well say that Scapeshift is a useless card without Valakut (and yet, even in recent Scapeshift decks, it combines well with Dig Through Time).
Pros bloom ramped into cadaverous bloom to turn card draw into mana so a lethal drain life could be played. That is in essence what high tide and Omnitell do.
Among many others. It's also in essence what Elves does, save that the cards turned into mana are creatures in play rather than in hand and pitched to Bloom. As I say, 'ramp a lot of mana, cast a big finisher' is an extremely generic description that applies to the majority of combo decks.
There are a lot of decks out there that don't see play anymore for the very reason that their "powerful cards" are no longer good enough. That is why I keep pointing out the there are newer versions of prosbloom that are viable. The old style of prosbloom is unplayable with the current crop of decks and available card pool.
Prosbloom is unplayable because the available card pool doesn't contain Vampiric Tutor or anything that can act as a close equivalent. Granted, that is somewhat simplistic - in its original form Prosbloom was almost completely non-interactive and I doubt that Elephant Grass is a sufficient answer to fast creature decks these days. Then again, where are those fast creature decks? Visions was the era of sligh, and the deck was able to survive and dominate even then. Modern Legacy decklists I've seen are rarely that aggressive, and Prosbloom is faster than most combo decks even now if you can consistently draw its components (which is why losing the Tutor cripples the deck). But the whole point of discussions about updating the deck are to use modern, interactive tools with it, not to play late '90s Bloom and expect it to compete with the current crop of decks.
Fwiw I used tendrils of agony in enchantress. It was win more in the deck and I removed it after that tournament. Quite the opposite of what you are trying to do with prosbloom.
I haven't considered Tendrils for Prosbloom at all - it's a poor fit, since the combo does not rely on consistently casting 10+ spells in the combo turn, and since the engine is all about generating excessive amounts of mana, there's no point at all to playing a finisher that costs only 2BB. But your anecdote illustrates precisely my main point, which you neglected: the existing crop of Legacy decks are solved problems, and trying to add to them only results in 'win more' additions like this.
If you just want to use stock decks and win games you can do that, but despite what commentators love to tell people there's rather limited scope for skill and decision-making within most Magic games once the key decision whether or not to mulligan has been made. This is particularly the case for combo decks that just need to hit their combo irrespective of what their opponents are doing, and is moreso in Legacy generally than in other formats since there are few decisions to make about when to use combat tricks, when to attack vs. when and what to block etc., as the format is not creature-focused. Most of the skill and interest in Legacy lies in deck construction and in making particular ideas and favoured cards competitive (at least locally, if not in the global metagame).
Prosbloom is unplayable because better cards exist now just like squanders resources is bad when the average deck can play off of 2 lands. You can miss what I'm saying which is fine and what I am attributing these discussions to. We are in an era of efficient spells, something which prosbloom of old lacks and a new build required to compete.
Feel free to take back your "stock deck" comment as well. That just tells me you don't frequent these boards often. Otherwise you are would know I have brewed numerous decks that are currently playable unlike your prosbloom plan.
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Minds Aglow is an upgrade to Prosperity. The opponent's option to pay is irrelevant because they'll never choose to do it, of course. The important part is that you won't have to pay the X until the spell resolves, making it better against counterspells, especially Daze and Spell Pierce.
Prosbloom is unplayable because better cards exist now just like squanders resources is bad when the average deck can play off of 2 lands. You can miss what I'm saying which is fine and what I am attributing these discussions to. We are in an era of efficient spells, something which prosbloom of old lacks and a new build required to compete.
So, what's an 'average' Legacy deck? Because none of the ones you've mentioned play off two lands, and - like Prosbloom - Enchantress can only start putting its combo pieces out at that level. Cards like High Tide and Exploration demand high land counts; indeed Squandered Resources is essentially nothing but a persistent, more versatile version of High Tide (the card). Most have a similar clock to Prosbloom; Dream Halls in Omnitell, for instance, costs the same as Cadaverous Bloom, and doesn't even work very differently in practice, save for having more specific card in hand requirements to power the combo and without the ability to take advantage of black's powerful 'cards for life' draw effects. (EDIT: As an aside, I'm rather puzzled by one of your key arguments, that decks like Omnitell and High Tide benefit from being monocoloured. Mono decks are more susceptible to hate - monoblue especially, because Choke exists - and restrict your access to tools available in other colours, and indeed those with gold borders. High Tides can only be a mono deck because back in Fallen Empires blue was once handed an off-colour ramp spell; had that card never been printed the deck could probably still have existed in blue-green or blue-black-green form, ironically using Squandered Resources in the latter case).
And I'll point out again that the whole point of this discussion is to improve Bloom, not to play the original deck. The core cards are actually highly efficient. Only two specific cards (aside from Tutor) are important for the combo: Resources and Bloom itself. Prosperity is an obvious card that has been superseded, but Natural Balance and Infernal Contract are being suggested because they're still the most efficient options for doing what they do. Natural Balance is just a ramp spell in this deck - but 15 years after Mirage it's still the only ramp spell that can give you 5 untapped lands for 2GG. Infernal Contract is more mana-efficient than any legal black draw spell save Promise of Power, which is equally efficient but more expensive (EDIT: an exception is if you see Griselbrand as simply a draw engine, in which case you can play him for 8 and net 14 Bloom-mana's-worth of cards. This may indeed not be a bad addition to the deck; if I had a Griselbrand I'd probably use him instead of Promise of Power as, like that card, it doubles as both draw and a potential finisher).
What Bloom lacked in its original form is an efficient finisher, something that's true of the host of combo decks that use X spell finishers to this day (Enchantress and High Tides among them). I've explicitly avoided trying to use a Drain Life-type finisher, and the alternatives I've suggested are all much more efficient, either by dealing repeatable damage (Mistcutter Hydra or a Promise of Power demon), or by netting greater value from each point of X than a drain for 1. Hence Villainous Wealth: Drain Life will end the game at a mana cost of 22 (more if the opponent has even modest lifegain); Villainous Wealth at a maximum of about 18. An 18-mana Drain Life deals 16 damage. An 18-point Villainous Wealth may pull an Emrakul who deals 15 a turn, and will in any case give you up to 15 free spells (beat that, Omniscience) and mill the opponent out of 15 cards in the process. Come to that, there really isn't any reason you can't use the Bloom engine, cut out the middle man, and just play Emrakul as your own finisher.
Feel free to take back your "stock deck" comment as well. That just tells me you don't frequent these boards often. Otherwise you are would know I have brewed numerous decks that are currently playable unlike your prosbloom plan.
None of which is relevant - I was referring only to this discussion, and what you've suggested as alternatives to my Bloom variants aren't playable homebrews, but trivial tweaks to existing stock decks that - in the case of Enchantress - you've pointed out yourself don't make any difference to the deck's performance, and that do nothing to change the way it either plays or wins.
Minds Aglow is an upgrade to Prosperity. The opponent's option to pay is irrelevant because they'll never choose to do it, of course. The important part is that you won't have to pay the X until the spell resolves, making it better against counterspells, especially Daze and Spell Pierce.
Thanks for that suggestion - I wasn't aware of that card, but you're right that it's a very good alternative to Prosperity in the deck.
EDIT: Sorry, I misread the card. Yes, it's still superior to Prosperity for the reasons you mention, however I'd read it as saying that the other player only drew cards if they contributed to the cost. Since that's not the case, and it's therefore as symmetrical as Prosperity, I still prefer Braingeyser (even though, like most X spells, it requires an upfront payment).
I don't recall specifying any decks other then high tide/omni tell being superior version of prosbloom now and the fact that I played enchantress with tendrils and cut it. As for your average deck that seems obvious: delver, storm, sneak and show, reanimator, dredge, burn, etc the stuff you are likely to see in any given tournament. Cards like high tide and exploration do not require high land counts. Dream halls in Omnitell should cost 3 mana as a turn one play and then makes your deck free to play, quite different from cadaverous bloom. Mono coloured decks in fact avoid more hate such as the very common wasteland. They are however more susceptible to more devastating cards like Iona, but common expected hate like choke is easier to deal with. On the topic of high tide there was also a version that splashes black for bubbling muck.
I'll reiterate that my point is that the deck has been improved; play high tide or Omnitell. Blue sun's zenith is far more efficient then prosperity or contract, but it's XUUU. In a deck using bloom as a mana engine contract is better suited, but not more efficient. To use Griselbrand instead brings us again to better decks that currently exist.
Prosbloom had an efficient finisher just as enchantress does (and it's not an x spell and has never been) and high tide (brain freeze or blue Suns zenith). All I'm seeing from your posts is that you are quite removed from the current state of legacy. I'm sorry you are ignoring my help. Good luck. You will soon realize your errors.
Private Mod Note
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I don't recall specifying any decks other then high tide/omni tell being superior version of prosbloom now and the fact that I played enchantress with tendrils and cut it. As for your average deck that seems obvious: delver, storm, sneak and show, reanimator, dredge, burn, etc the stuff you are likely to see in any given tournament.
I went up against a delver deck and a Jund deck yesterday (one game each). The deck did, indeed, underperform, but for the reasons I predicted - without a tutor it lacks consistency. Nothing to do with efficiency, the effectiveness of the combo pieces, or time (the games went to 5 or 6 turns). Vs. the Jund deck I lost Resources to a cascaded removal spell; vs. Delver I had the enchantments in place but never drew Contract or Braingeyser. One problem may in fact be that I modified the deck too heavily - I suspect it may need the 4-deep scrying Impulse allows over the more efficient options like Ponder or Preordain. I've also observed that my deck necessarily lacks another tool of the original Bloom decks - Natural Balance - that accelerates the combo (and pulls excess land out of the deck), so I'm already using a slower deck than the engine allows.
Cards like high tide and exploration do not require high land counts. Dream halls in Omnitell should cost 3 mana as a turn one play
That's a nice trick. Care to explain how you manage it in a deck that has no cost reduction effects? More impressive still, since it must require multiple cards to pull off, how it does so consistently with a 7-card opening hand (presumably 8 if you have the option to play or draw, but you'll only have the option 50% of the time)?
and then makes your deck free to play, quite different from cadaverous bloom.
You pitch cards to play things - that's no more free than Bloom. Unlike Bloom, you need to have cards with specific mana costs in hand to pull it off, which in the case of a card like Omniscience means you need two copies of that one card in hand.
Mono coloured decks in fact avoid more hate such as the very common wasteland.
The Omnitell deck list I looked at (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/28972_Know-It-All-Your-Guide-To-Omni-Tell.html) contains 7 islands and 13 nonbasics, and even Island-hungry decks like High Tide want to use nonbasics to some degree. Tell an Elves deck that just lost its Gaea's Cradle that Wasteland isn't effective against mono decks. You're really going to sell the idea that mono decks are resistant to hate on the basis of Wasteland alone, a card which - if it does run into a bad matchup - will just be sided out for Rishadan Port in the next game?
I'll reiterate that my point is that the deck has been improved; play high tide or Omnitell. Blue sun's zenith is far more efficient then prosperity or contract, but it's XUUU.
One of us is evidently misunderstanding how the term 'efficient' is used in Magic. Certainly in my day, a card was efficient if it gave you its effect for a lower mana cost, and usually cards did so by incurring an alternative cost such as life loss or giving the opponent cards. Vampiric Tutor is more efficient than Demonic, Thoughtseize is more efficient than Coercion, and Prosperity is more efficient than Blue Sun's Zenith (granted, that adds card efficiency since you don't lose the card) or Braingeyser. Blue Sun's Zenith is more powerful, but not more efficient.
In a deck using bloom as a mana engine contract is better suited, but not more efficient. To use Griselbrand instead brings us again to better decks that currently exist.
Griselbrand is used in half a dozen deck types. Using him in a Bloom deck as well hardly makes Bloom a reanimator deck, any more than Omnitell and Reanimator are the same deck if both use Emrakul. The point here isn't to ignore proven good cards or solutions for no other reason than other decks use them. The point is only to use the Bloom/Resources engine in a modern deck.
It's far from obvious that this isn't competitive - both key cards remain strong, if not actually better than they once were due to improved finishers to use the mana with, superior card draw options to fuel Bloom, and improved interactions (such as Squandered Resources with Treasure Cruise). GB is an intrinsically strong combination, and Prosbloom is ultimately just a powerful ramp engine - something any combo deck can use. The deck's one weakness is its reliance on multiple parts: the combo needs five cards (Bloom, Resources, Natural Balance, the Prosperity variant of choice, and the finisher) to run the combo quickly, and can't trigger at all with fewer than three (NB and, at a stretch, Resources can fail to show and the deck will still play - but as banning Resources in Mirage block demonstrated, it will no longer be consistently fast enough to be competitive) plus additional card draw.
Prosbloom had an efficient finisher just as enchantress does (and it's not an x spell and has never been)
I've seen Enchantress lists with Banefire as the finisher.
and high tide (brain freeze or blue Suns zenith). All I'm seeing from your posts is that you are quite removed from the current state of legacy. I'm sorry you are ignoring my help. Good luck. You will soon realize your errors.
I don't deny that I'm not overly familiar with the state of Legacy - I'm working from what I've seen in decklists, as there isn't a local Legacy community to any degree. My experiences so far, however, indicate that the deck still has tools that are effective in the current game, as long as it can either improve its consistency or improve its interactivity so that it can hold out long enough to pull its key cards without a tutor. While I appreciate the time you've devoted to the discussion, I'm afraid I don't recognise "play a different deck" as a helpful contribution to a thread explicitly about trying to tweak Bloom to improve its competitiveness.
Drop city of solitude and Gemstone for Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual. Why? Because you want the opportunity to go off T1 on good draws, but either way; you want live cards. You're trying to go off.
TES is successful because of 1-mana disruption to protect it's combo; Unless you too use low mana disruption you'll only go off T4+ which means you're dead.
IMO the biggest portion of the combo is Natural Balance + Squandered Resources. You get a ritual + mox hand, squader, balance, infernal contract, go off. Consider a Gaea's Balance or some such to recycle your graveyard so Natural isn't dead, but without leaving yourself with too many lands in the deck.
Look, Fetch, Draw, Look
Draw
Fetch
Look
Imagine: Mine, Spirit Guide, Squandered Resources, Balance, Bloom, Swamp, Contract, enables T2 combo.
even if I cut the Mine's to get Land grant, I still have 16 lands so the risk of Grant being dead is relatively high, also maybe you don't wanna show what your going to do, do you?
The build with Dark/Cabal with Mox could suggest your opponent to be Spanish inquisition...
"Well, then we will at least fight in the shadow"
"There is no glory to be gained in the kingdom of the dead!"
Post by Narah about unbanning Mind Twist in legacy and that this would be evil:
If you want to play on MTGO add me I'm HeskatetAS, playing Modern and Legacy
If wizards would print a green, black and white version of Hydroblast and Blue Elemental Blast Painter could be done in every color.
RRImperial PainterRR
UUUUMonoOmniTellUUUU
BGURWDredgeWRUGB
i do actually enjoy cadaverous bloom and i wanted to build a deck out of it but it seems just so inconsistent for many reason. When i'am building a combo deck by my own (with the decked app.) i ask my self 3 big questions.
now i don't say that my advice are gold, but it "worked" for me till now, the 2 last deck i built was on final and win both. But i wont boast it was a 18 players tournament :D:D:D:D:D
Anyway my final sentence is :
if you're not running something that can keep up with or annoy "Tier deck" it's not even worth trying. (discard, counter, silence effect, mana disrupt, tax effect.)
I hope i wrote in proper english, if not sorry
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=288435
Now it's about two days that i am goldfishing and it works decently i am quite happy and i am sure there is some modification to do, that's why i wont fully commit and put the list yet. But if people are interested for me putting that list in here i will.
For card draw, Titania builds can profit from Life's Legacy, and this can perhaps replace Infernal Contract. Re the Prosperity vs. Blue Sun's Zenith, Braingeyser is legal in Legacy and is superior to both.
Blue mana remains a restriction since Cadaverous Bloom can't generate it. However, I think multicolour mana fixing is now strong enough to allow it - the deck can still use Undiscovered Paradise, and Squandered Resources can still double your blue. A lot of the newer win conditions, from Banefire to Villainous Wealth, lack Drain Life's 'only black mana' restriction. So Braingeyser is probably a better card for modern Prosbloom decks, especially since it is a real concern that, as mentioned by the poster you replied to, power levels are higher now than once they were.
And while Prosbloom is a great name for a deck, Brainbloom is even better.
I'll vote once again for Villainous Wealth. On average you're probably putting more value into play for every point of X than 1 damage from Drain Life, some of those threats may be persistent if you happen to grab permanents (no, you don't need Emrakul in your deck, but having it in the other guy's is nice), you're denying cards to the opponent and - if you do pull it off for 20-24 mana - even if you don't get great value you're still in with a chance of decking him. It's one of the most versatile win conditions this deck can run with.
Agreed. If nothing else, Force of Will and/or other free counters can be added to the deck or sideboard.
Not insurmountable with alternate card draw options - e.g. Life's Legacy in a deck with some creature generation.
There's Beseech the Queen from Shadowmoor, which can at least grab Squandered Resources early. Liliana Vess is a later option but potentially repeatable. But the best bet is probably to join the herd and run with Dig Through Time - Cadaverous Bloom and Squandered Resources are both excellent delve engines.
EDIT: Scratch that, I misread the 2/B hybrid symbol as 2 life/B (not very familiar with either Shadowmoor or New Phyrexia, but knew the latter mechanic existed) which would have made Beseech the Queen an essentially mana-free Tutor. As it is it's too slow and conditional for a Bloom deck. And once you hit 4 mana you may as well go with Diabolic Tutor or - and given that this deck draws so many cards it may be a stronger option - Abundance
Since Visions, surely (when Impulse was first printed)?
One new entry into the running in this deck may be Taigam's Scheming, which while it doesn't draw cards itself doesn't really need to in this deck, since the draw engine is so powerful; on the other hand, it's almost strictly inferior to Lim-Dul's Vault in a deck that has access to ready black mana and doesn't particularly need cards in the graveyard. It can be very helpful for stacking a draw and semi-tutoring; the main argument against is that Dig Through Time is just better, although that does require UU. In this deck, Brainstorm fills the Three Wishes/Ideas Unbound role more than the Impulse role.
If Banefire was a great win condition, the original Prosbloom decks would have used Kaervek's Torch. Banefire's a cute way to win, but it's going off-colour in a deck that has no need to; countering their counters is the better play. Cards like Villainous Wealth and Banefire have an inherent advantage over Drain Life in that the deck can then run Drain Power as a way to disrupt the opponent, and add the resulting mana to the X spell finisher.
Crucible of Worlds might be the answer, since you can play lands directly from the graveyard, but it doesn't give you five lands into play at once. In a Titania build of the sort I suggested, she also brings lands back into play from the yard. If the sticking point is the lack of one specific colour, both cards are good answers. There's also the ever-dependable Life from the Loam, but you may not want to risk dredging combo pieces away.
EDIT: Here's a quick idea I put together - it's a draft list, without a breakdown of the basic lands and with perhaps one or two few lands, but that can be corrected at need (Kruphix, God of Horizons is a definite indulgence, but if Bloom is more for fun than competition these days, why not? Mistcutter Hydra is an alternate win condition that should probably be sideboarded rather than maindecked as it fails, or is at least rather slow, against decks with non-blue creatures. The absence of Natural Balance is due purely to the fact that Channel Fireball was out of them when I looked at the availability of the cards I needed,and this might be fatal to this particular deck). The lands are the ones I have rather than the ones that are optimal, so no Bayou or Tropical Island, and only one Polluted Delta (my others are in my Standard deck).
4 Squandered Resources
2 Dig Through Time
4 Brainstorm
2 Villainous Wealth
3 Force of Will
2 Memory Lapse
1 Regrowth
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
2 Drain Power
4 Ponder
4 Braingeyser
1 Mistcutter Hydra
1 Kruphix, God of Horizons
4 Undiscovered Valley
1 Underground Sea
1 Polluted Delta (all I have spare)
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Gemstone Mine
3 Breeding Pool
1 River of Tears
The deck was edited. At the time I wrote this message, his deck had no way to produce red mana.
Natural Balance not being in the deck slows the combo, and perhaps most importantly means you have very restricted sources of blue mana once you've used Resources. This makes Mistcutter Hydra a more attractive (but fundamentally less fun) win condition than Villainous Wealth if running Braingeyser, since a Braingeyser-Braingeyser-Wealth play will be tough to pull off. With that in mind I'll probably put Prosperity back in the deck in place of Braingeyser; the downside being the obvious tension between Wealth and giving your opponent card draw. Hydra also really needs to be at traditional X spell values for a Bloom deck (i.e. 20+), which is less viable without Natural Balance; Villianous Wealth can trigger at a much lower value; the maximum optimal value is probably 15 and lower against decks that don't run Emrakul.
Harmonize and Infernal Contract become more attractive card draw options for the same reason. To fuel the latter Lake of the Dead is worth investigating, as it gives more for the sacrificial buck than Squandered Resources. It also helps with the finisher, and it's rather strange the card never seems to have seen use in Prosbloom builds before (as it helps Drain Life too, and Alliances was Type 2-legal at the time. It may have been banned at the time, I don't recall).
In terms of actually generating the mana, Deathrite Shaman is an obviously good fit for the deck, and there's a B gap in the mana curve where Vampiric Tutor used to be. I even wondered whether Teferi's Isle might solve the blue mana limitation, but being unusable until it's been in play for 3 turns just makes it too slow. Lotus Vale could do the job, perhaps? Without Natural Balance, there's less of a need to have large numbers of basic lands in the deck.
-----The Legacy Flowchart-----
Tiny Leaders Overlord
That's a very good idea for some formulations of the deck; I still haven't worked out my land count, however I wonder whether I'll have enough islands to pull it off. I don't have the Tropical Island favoured by most versions of the deck list - then again I do have an Underground Sea, Breeding Pools, and both Polluted Delta and Bad River (which I'll probably add in since two of my three Polluted Deltas are currently in my Standard deck, and the original fetchland has proven good enough for the deck in its heyday) that can help in that regard.
The latest version I've developed (still minus lands) is:
4 Squandered Resources
2 Exploration
4 Brainstorm
2 Villainous Wealth
3 Force of Will
2 Treasure Cruise
1 Regrowth
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
4 Infernal Contract
4 Prosperity
4 Deathrite Shaman
Exploration seems a better fit for the deck than Explore since, while it isn't a cantrip, the deck has enough card drawing that multiple lands to be played and sacrificed to Resources/Shaman are likely to be drawn - with Deathrite and Resources together, and with the option for extra blue mana this way, playing and saccing is more efficient and versatile than pitching to Cadaverous Bloom, and it is never less so.
This deck in particular is one where the Dig Through Time vs. Treasure Cruise debate is pertinent. Superficially, Dig is the better card for a combo deck - however this particular deck values straight card draw more than most, being able to cast for only a single mana ups the final X spell count, and by the time you cast either your combo pieces will be in place (since you won't be delving unless you're saccing to Resources), so Treasure Cruise seems the correct choice.
I'll see how the deck performs both with Prosperity and with Braingeyser - if blue mana is reliably available to power the combo, I'll take out Prosperity again. Right now my Braingeysers are still on order so my first real trial of the deck will have to use Prosperity.
I replaced the Ponders, which I put in because the deck was short of a tutor, again because straight card draw seems the way to go with the deck and Infernal Contract is tried and tested in this role. I do like the idea of Ideas Unbound in the deck, but don't have any on hand. I also dropped Drain Power - it gave the deck useful disruption, but the idea is that the deck will go off fairly early (turn 4 is likely), in which case the mana added to the pool from Drain Power may do little more than cover the card's cost - it will still be in the sideboard.
In terms of lands, I wonder whether the Onslaught cycling lands may be viable in this deck? This deck rarely wants to pitch lands into the graveyard, but card draw is card draw.
EDIT: Since discovering this card in the latest Commander deck (though it's not a new card, and I was playing intermittently at the time, Mirrodin was such a tedious block - both gamewise and in terms of general characterlessness - I didn't develop a lasting memory of most of the cards), I've replaced one Infernal Contract with Promise of Power on a trial basis.
The reason Infernal Contract is still relevant in the deck today is that Bloom values card draw efficiency very highly, and almost all is costed so that drawing and pitching to Bloom will break even on your mana investment - Sign in Blood, for instance, costs a card you could have pitched to Bloom and BB for two cards that can net you only the same net mana you'd gain from throwing Sign in Blood itself. The same's true of Harmonize.
Pulling 8 mana's worth of cards for a card and three mana makes Contract one of the most efficient draw engines (only Ideas Unbound where you pitch everything before the forced discard or a 1 mana Treasure Cruise is more efficient). Promise of Power is almost as efficient, giving the same 3 mana net gain for a cost of 5 plus a card, but the extra 2 mana cost makes it harder to play early. For that reason I'm not sure it's as good an inclusion despite the lower cost in life that makes the deck more burn-resistant, since you're less likely to be able to use it before you have the combo in place (Lake of the Dead notwithstanding). On the other hand, in terms of actually drawing what you need 5 cards is better than 4, and those two extra mana may make the difference in getting an early kill when the combo is in place. While I expect I'll rarely if ever use it this way, following a Prosperity against a removal-light deck Promise can actually double as a finisher by using its demon-summoning effect instead of - or if mana permits as well as - the card draw. Probably 1 Promise vs. 3 Contract will prove to be correct.
Basically I don't follow the desire to rebuild an old deck when newer versions already exist.
And just as another aside, I basically built this as enchantress, and even there it is win more.
-----The Legacy Flowchart-----
Tiny Leaders Overlord
That's a pretty broad definition of 'doing what prosbloom did'. Prosbloom ramped to a lot of mana, then killed with a finisher. That's generic enough that many, many decks work with the same strategy, and most super-ramp decks are combo-based. On that criterion Omni-Tell and Elves are much the same deck, only one uses Emrakul and the other Craterhoof Behemoth. You could if you want think of a wide variety of current Legacy decks as being essentially Prosbloom variants.
It's the same reason there are multiple decks to begin with. Decks like Omni-Tell and Elves are solved problems - they have pretty rigid deck lists and don't change much bar a Treasure Cruise here or there every few sets. There are a lot of good decks out there that don't see use any more and a lot of strong cards that see less use than they should (really, look at Squandered Resources. This card should be everywhere - it's hardly just a combo piece with Cadaverous Bloom, but is very effective mana acceleration for any quick deck. It's by far the most powerful card in the original Prosbloom deck, save only Vampiric Tutor. Back when the deck dominated Mirage block, Squandered Resources - not Vampiric - was the card that got banned. Yet it's never used any more). The basic combo pieces of Prosbloom are strong cards even today and it's tempting to return to it just because it is always on the cusp of playability. It hasn't been playable for years only because Vampiric Tutor has been banned and has never received a suitable replacement; nearly everything else about the deck remains strong. Even the post from last year on this thread that responded to the question about newer cards to replace elements of the original deck only presented about four possibilities, and one of those was a replacement for Bad River.
Prosbloom is also a fundamentally versatile shell - it can pick finishers from any of three colours (or any combination thereof), and with enough fixing conceivably even from another. That in itself makes it attractive for 'brewing' in a way High Tide never will be. Sure, Enchantress can use Banefire. It could use the Banefire analogue my design does - Mistcutter Hydra. Enchantress can't use Drain Life, and it can't use Villainous Wealth. The latter results in a deck that plays rather differently from the Banefire variant. Prosbloom can be readily adapted to use any of these finishers, up to and including Banefire (which is an obviously especially good fit with Cadaverous Bloom) for an Enchantress-like deck or Stroke of Genius for a High Tide analogue.
Sure, for me specifically Cadaverous Bloom and Squandered Resources are nostalgia nods to my Magic youth as well as being strong cards per se, but a lot of decks come about because people want to use specific cards and find the right shell, and I was looking more to find a home for Villainous Wealth initially than to resurrect Prosbloom (though that had been on my mind). Or just for a Legacy deck that isn't blue-led (though granted, making a competitive non-blue deck that's green-black led is not the most radical notion out there).
I've tried Lim-Dul's Vault and, like Taigam's Scheming, the lack of a cantrip effect makes it hard to justify spending blue on it; it's also very much more restrictive than either Scheming or Impulse in what it gives you once the cycling is through.
For anyone still interested, my testing so far has identified the following that can help one or other formulation of the deck:
Card Draw
Sign in Blood is considerably worse than Ideas Unbound, but has the advantage that you can cast it free with a single pitch from Cadaverous Bloom. I'm running one copy alongside 3 Infernal Contracts and 1
Promise of Power 5 is a lot for this deck to pay for straight card draw and this card is still on probation; unlike Sign in Blood or Infernal Contract you can't usefully use it to set up the combo (without Lake of the Dead, but in testing the situations where that card adds meaningful value to the deck are too rare to justify its inclusion).
Without tutors, one mana is an important place to have your card draw. Brainstorm, Ponder, Serum Visions and Preordain all good replacements for Impulse - I'm currently using 4 Brainstorm and 3 Ponder.
Treasure Cruise is a valuable draw engine that firs in Bloom as well as it fits in every other Legacy deck with blue and lots of cheap sorceries and cantrips - which is to say, very well indeed. Extra fuel from land sacrifices makes it better still; with Lotus Vale (which also feeds it) and Cadaverous Bloom, you can chain a Cruise and a Braingeyser that pitches the cards just drawn. I've found builds with 2-4 Cruises are effective; the card's big rival, Dig Through Time, underperforms in Bloom, functioning as not much more than a conditional Sign in Blood that nets you two cards for UU.
Braingeyser: UU is a little difficult to chain, unlike Prosperity, but in my testing it's doable with this deck's availability of dual- and multi-lands.
Finishers
Villainous Wealth remains a favourite, fun win condition, but is harder to pull off than others in decks that run Braingeyser over Prosperity. While it can set you up for a pretty much certain win, and needs less mana to act as a finisher than Drain Life (usually 10-18 vs. 22) it's not usually going to kill straight away, and an alternate win condition is valuable at least in the sideboard since it does nothing against decks that rely on X spells to win themselves. Advantages are that it is effective with Memory Lapse and that it will often put persistent threats in play that makes it capable of beating lifegain decks.
Mistcutter Hydra is a more serious win condition, acting essentially the same way Banefire does and getting past blue irritants like True-Name Nemesis. It's pretty reliant on City of Solitude being in play to evade removal, and isn't suitable against creature-heavy decks that can block it. If it can't be removed or blocked it's much better than Drain Life or Banefire, since it can be cast at a smaller mana cost if needed and, as repeatable damage, decks with lifegain don't get the automatic win against you they do against traditional Bloom decks.
Titania, Protector of Argoth is an interesting supplementary finisher I have on probation in my sideboard. It has natural synergy with the deck, turning lands sacced to Squandered Resources or Lotus Vale, Gemstone Mines, Bad Rivers and Polluted Deltas et al all into elementals - and as a bonus bringing back a land that can then become an elemental itself.
Counterspells
Force of Will is no free counter in this deck, as the card you removed amounts to two mana. Then again, Memory Lapse costs two mana as well and you need to have said mana in hand. Ponders and Brainstorms lose enough value as the game goes on that you shouldn't be short of fuel for Force of Will.
Pact of Negation is risky if you're squandering your blue resources, but even if the game does go on for a further turn after you cast this, with Bloom and Resources you need only a single blue source in play and two cards in hand to pay its cost when the loan falls due.
Lands
Polluted Delta/Misty Rainforest/Verdant Catacombs: These cards are not, in fact, strictly superior to Bad River, since they have a life cost associated with their use and that can be important for this deck. As well as coming in three times as many relevant flavours as Bad River, however, they can set up a turn 1 spell Bad River can't - as such, Misty Rainforest and Polluted Delta are the important two here. I wouldn't use many of either, though, and because of the card draw available past turn 1 or 2 fetchlands lose their value quite quickly.
Tranquil Thicket/Barren Moor: I've found using these in small numbers to be very effective, as they give you turn 1 card draw without blue; at least once this has fetched me Squandered Resources in time for a turn 2 play.
Lotus Vale: In the land of the Cruise, the lotus farmer is king. I've found this a very effective addition, and the card is simply better overall now than it was in Weatherlight (in part because of Delve) as long as you side it out when faced with Wasteland. I only use one, because it is restrictive to play, but I like to play it to enable the final combo; the four blue mana you can net from it in a turn (with Resources) can chain two Braingeysers, or power a Cruise followed by a geyser, or in my build, Cruise followed by Geyser followed by Villainous Wealth.
Overgrown Tomb/Breeding Pool/Watery Grave: No Bloom deck really needs shocklands; even the original Bloom decks didn't use the full allowance of original duals available. But since most of us are on a budget they're a more available option these days, and Polluted Delta et al. make counting as a swamp or island more valuable than it was back in the day. A deck happy to play Bad River can equally happily play these tapped in any case.
Exploration I really don't like the fact that Explore costs two mana, for all that this deck is hungry for cantrips. With a fairly common opening of a Brainstorm in hand, a source of green mana, and a source of blue this accelerates the combo quite reliably. Playing, using and sacrificing a second land is never worse than pitching the same card to Bloom, and is obviously better if you need blue mana.
Pros bloom ramped into cadaverous bloom to turn card draw into mana so a lethal drain life could be played. That is in essence what high tide and Omnitell do. You are creating a combo turn, your critical mass of spells needed to "go off." Again, the big difference being high tide/Omnitell are mono coloured and able to protect themselves while being immune to a lot of common hate.
There are a lot of decks out there that don't see play anymore for the very reason that their "powerful cards" are no longer good enough. That is why I keep pointing out the there are newer versions of prosbloom that are viable. The old style of prosbloom is unplayable with the current crop of decks and available card pool.
Fwiw I used tendrils of agony in enchantress. It was win more in the deck and I removed it after that tournament. Quite the opposite of what you are trying to do with prosbloom.
-----The Legacy Flowchart-----
Tiny Leaders Overlord
You're making the mistake of looking at the card only in the context in which it was used in Prosbloom. Natural Balance made the card a powerful one-turn combo engine; unlike Natural Balance itself - which, without a sacrifice outlet, is actually a rather poor card - Resources is a potent card in isolation. All it gets from Natural Balance is extra lands in play, and there are numerous newer ways of achieving the same result as well as cards like Crucible of Worlds that make lands in the graveyard less of a downside than they were when the card was printed (a reason Lotus Vale is also stronger now than it was back in Weatherlight). You might as well say that Scapeshift is a useless card without Valakut (and yet, even in recent Scapeshift decks, it combines well with Dig Through Time).
Among many others. It's also in essence what Elves does, save that the cards turned into mana are creatures in play rather than in hand and pitched to Bloom. As I say, 'ramp a lot of mana, cast a big finisher' is an extremely generic description that applies to the majority of combo decks.
Prosbloom is unplayable because the available card pool doesn't contain Vampiric Tutor or anything that can act as a close equivalent. Granted, that is somewhat simplistic - in its original form Prosbloom was almost completely non-interactive and I doubt that Elephant Grass is a sufficient answer to fast creature decks these days. Then again, where are those fast creature decks? Visions was the era of sligh, and the deck was able to survive and dominate even then. Modern Legacy decklists I've seen are rarely that aggressive, and Prosbloom is faster than most combo decks even now if you can consistently draw its components (which is why losing the Tutor cripples the deck). But the whole point of discussions about updating the deck are to use modern, interactive tools with it, not to play late '90s Bloom and expect it to compete with the current crop of decks.
I haven't considered Tendrils for Prosbloom at all - it's a poor fit, since the combo does not rely on consistently casting 10+ spells in the combo turn, and since the engine is all about generating excessive amounts of mana, there's no point at all to playing a finisher that costs only 2BB. But your anecdote illustrates precisely my main point, which you neglected: the existing crop of Legacy decks are solved problems, and trying to add to them only results in 'win more' additions like this.
If you just want to use stock decks and win games you can do that, but despite what commentators love to tell people there's rather limited scope for skill and decision-making within most Magic games once the key decision whether or not to mulligan has been made. This is particularly the case for combo decks that just need to hit their combo irrespective of what their opponents are doing, and is moreso in Legacy generally than in other formats since there are few decisions to make about when to use combat tricks, when to attack vs. when and what to block etc., as the format is not creature-focused. Most of the skill and interest in Legacy lies in deck construction and in making particular ideas and favoured cards competitive (at least locally, if not in the global metagame).
Feel free to take back your "stock deck" comment as well. That just tells me you don't frequent these boards often. Otherwise you are would know I have brewed numerous decks that are currently playable unlike your prosbloom plan.
-----The Legacy Flowchart-----
Tiny Leaders Overlord
So, what's an 'average' Legacy deck? Because none of the ones you've mentioned play off two lands, and - like Prosbloom - Enchantress can only start putting its combo pieces out at that level. Cards like High Tide and Exploration demand high land counts; indeed Squandered Resources is essentially nothing but a persistent, more versatile version of High Tide (the card). Most have a similar clock to Prosbloom; Dream Halls in Omnitell, for instance, costs the same as Cadaverous Bloom, and doesn't even work very differently in practice, save for having more specific card in hand requirements to power the combo and without the ability to take advantage of black's powerful 'cards for life' draw effects. (EDIT: As an aside, I'm rather puzzled by one of your key arguments, that decks like Omnitell and High Tide benefit from being monocoloured. Mono decks are more susceptible to hate - monoblue especially, because Choke exists - and restrict your access to tools available in other colours, and indeed those with gold borders. High Tides can only be a mono deck because back in Fallen Empires blue was once handed an off-colour ramp spell; had that card never been printed the deck could probably still have existed in blue-green or blue-black-green form, ironically using Squandered Resources in the latter case).
And I'll point out again that the whole point of this discussion is to improve Bloom, not to play the original deck. The core cards are actually highly efficient. Only two specific cards (aside from Tutor) are important for the combo: Resources and Bloom itself. Prosperity is an obvious card that has been superseded, but Natural Balance and Infernal Contract are being suggested because they're still the most efficient options for doing what they do. Natural Balance is just a ramp spell in this deck - but 15 years after Mirage it's still the only ramp spell that can give you 5 untapped lands for 2GG. Infernal Contract is more mana-efficient than any legal black draw spell save Promise of Power, which is equally efficient but more expensive (EDIT: an exception is if you see Griselbrand as simply a draw engine, in which case you can play him for 8 and net 14 Bloom-mana's-worth of cards. This may indeed not be a bad addition to the deck; if I had a Griselbrand I'd probably use him instead of Promise of Power as, like that card, it doubles as both draw and a potential finisher).
What Bloom lacked in its original form is an efficient finisher, something that's true of the host of combo decks that use X spell finishers to this day (Enchantress and High Tides among them). I've explicitly avoided trying to use a Drain Life-type finisher, and the alternatives I've suggested are all much more efficient, either by dealing repeatable damage (Mistcutter Hydra or a Promise of Power demon), or by netting greater value from each point of X than a drain for 1. Hence Villainous Wealth: Drain Life will end the game at a mana cost of 22 (more if the opponent has even modest lifegain); Villainous Wealth at a maximum of about 18. An 18-mana Drain Life deals 16 damage. An 18-point Villainous Wealth may pull an Emrakul who deals 15 a turn, and will in any case give you up to 15 free spells (beat that, Omniscience) and mill the opponent out of 15 cards in the process. Come to that, there really isn't any reason you can't use the Bloom engine, cut out the middle man, and just play Emrakul as your own finisher.
None of which is relevant - I was referring only to this discussion, and what you've suggested as alternatives to my Bloom variants aren't playable homebrews, but trivial tweaks to existing stock decks that - in the case of Enchantress - you've pointed out yourself don't make any difference to the deck's performance, and that do nothing to change the way it either plays or wins.
Thanks for that suggestion - I wasn't aware of that card, but you're right that it's a very good alternative to Prosperity in the deck.
EDIT: Sorry, I misread the card. Yes, it's still superior to Prosperity for the reasons you mention, however I'd read it as saying that the other player only drew cards if they contributed to the cost. Since that's not the case, and it's therefore as symmetrical as Prosperity, I still prefer Braingeyser (even though, like most X spells, it requires an upfront payment).
I'll reiterate that my point is that the deck has been improved; play high tide or Omnitell. Blue sun's zenith is far more efficient then prosperity or contract, but it's XUUU. In a deck using bloom as a mana engine contract is better suited, but not more efficient. To use Griselbrand instead brings us again to better decks that currently exist.
Prosbloom had an efficient finisher just as enchantress does (and it's not an x spell and has never been) and high tide (brain freeze or blue Suns zenith). All I'm seeing from your posts is that you are quite removed from the current state of legacy. I'm sorry you are ignoring my help. Good luck. You will soon realize your errors.
-----The Legacy Flowchart-----
Tiny Leaders Overlord
I went up against a delver deck and a Jund deck yesterday (one game each). The deck did, indeed, underperform, but for the reasons I predicted - without a tutor it lacks consistency. Nothing to do with efficiency, the effectiveness of the combo pieces, or time (the games went to 5 or 6 turns). Vs. the Jund deck I lost Resources to a cascaded removal spell; vs. Delver I had the enchantments in place but never drew Contract or Braingeyser. One problem may in fact be that I modified the deck too heavily - I suspect it may need the 4-deep scrying Impulse allows over the more efficient options like Ponder or Preordain. I've also observed that my deck necessarily lacks another tool of the original Bloom decks - Natural Balance - that accelerates the combo (and pulls excess land out of the deck), so I'm already using a slower deck than the engine allows.
That's a nice trick. Care to explain how you manage it in a deck that has no cost reduction effects? More impressive still, since it must require multiple cards to pull off, how it does so consistently with a 7-card opening hand (presumably 8 if you have the option to play or draw, but you'll only have the option 50% of the time)?
You pitch cards to play things - that's no more free than Bloom. Unlike Bloom, you need to have cards with specific mana costs in hand to pull it off, which in the case of a card like Omniscience means you need two copies of that one card in hand.
The Omnitell deck list I looked at (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/28972_Know-It-All-Your-Guide-To-Omni-Tell.html) contains 7 islands and 13 nonbasics, and even Island-hungry decks like High Tide want to use nonbasics to some degree. Tell an Elves deck that just lost its Gaea's Cradle that Wasteland isn't effective against mono decks. You're really going to sell the idea that mono decks are resistant to hate on the basis of Wasteland alone, a card which - if it does run into a bad matchup - will just be sided out for Rishadan Port in the next game?
One of us is evidently misunderstanding how the term 'efficient' is used in Magic. Certainly in my day, a card was efficient if it gave you its effect for a lower mana cost, and usually cards did so by incurring an alternative cost such as life loss or giving the opponent cards. Vampiric Tutor is more efficient than Demonic, Thoughtseize is more efficient than Coercion, and Prosperity is more efficient than Blue Sun's Zenith (granted, that adds card efficiency since you don't lose the card) or Braingeyser. Blue Sun's Zenith is more powerful, but not more efficient.
Griselbrand is used in half a dozen deck types. Using him in a Bloom deck as well hardly makes Bloom a reanimator deck, any more than Omnitell and Reanimator are the same deck if both use Emrakul. The point here isn't to ignore proven good cards or solutions for no other reason than other decks use them. The point is only to use the Bloom/Resources engine in a modern deck.
It's far from obvious that this isn't competitive - both key cards remain strong, if not actually better than they once were due to improved finishers to use the mana with, superior card draw options to fuel Bloom, and improved interactions (such as Squandered Resources with Treasure Cruise). GB is an intrinsically strong combination, and Prosbloom is ultimately just a powerful ramp engine - something any combo deck can use. The deck's one weakness is its reliance on multiple parts: the combo needs five cards (Bloom, Resources, Natural Balance, the Prosperity variant of choice, and the finisher) to run the combo quickly, and can't trigger at all with fewer than three (NB and, at a stretch, Resources can fail to show and the deck will still play - but as banning Resources in Mirage block demonstrated, it will no longer be consistently fast enough to be competitive) plus additional card draw.
I've seen Enchantress lists with Banefire as the finisher.
I don't deny that I'm not overly familiar with the state of Legacy - I'm working from what I've seen in decklists, as there isn't a local Legacy community to any degree. My experiences so far, however, indicate that the deck still has tools that are effective in the current game, as long as it can either improve its consistency or improve its interactivity so that it can hold out long enough to pull its key cards without a tutor. While I appreciate the time you've devoted to the discussion, I'm afraid I don't recognise "play a different deck" as a helpful contribution to a thread explicitly about trying to tweak Bloom to improve its competitiveness.