In my constant search into innovative legacy decks (of which I've found many on this very forum) I was talking with a friend who told me one of the best ways to create new and exciting legacy decks is to look for cards that are sufficiently powerful but for whatever reason don't see play in legacy. I started thinking about what my favorite cards across my history of magic playing were, I came up with a few. Goblin Welder was one. I tried brewing up some grixis/dega artifact control/reanimator lists that seemed interesting to me, but it lacked the synergy I wanted... aside from reanimating a Magister Sphinx and hitting someone with a Hidetsugu's Second Rite (very unlikely). The second card I came up with was Astral Slide, I remembered seeing that card when I was a VERY young magic player and being confused of its purpose, why would you want to exile creatures temporarily? I put together a kind of necra value cycling list with the onslaught lands (Barren Moor, Secluded Steppe, Tranquil Thicket), the goal would be to cycle your lands at the end of your opponents turn to flicker creatures Eternal Witness to get back cards like Vindicate and Pernicious Deed. I also included Life from the Loam which let you basically generate a flickering engine with the cycling lands and Astral Slide. The list also runs Living Wish to allow for sideboard creature (and land) tech. Flickering Harmonic Sliver seemed good, along with Sin Collector and Orzhov Pontiff, I also included Corrupt Court Official in the sideboard as another Living Wish target (it's a $10 Ravenous Rats!).
All of that aside, I've spent some more time scouring my brain for cards I could remember from when I was just a little boy, playing the Apocalypse "Burial" theme deck, can you imagine how confusing Dead Ringers was to me as a child? A card that crossed my mind was the infamous Cadaverous Bloom. Like astral slide it was another enchantment I saw and was confused by. I just didn't understand why you'd ever want to discard your own cards to add mana to your pool... I knew you needed mana to play cards, but how could you play your cards if you were discarding them??? Of course I eventually figured out how the card got played properly thanks to a friendly camp counselor who also introduced me to cards like Demonic Tutor which I still hold near and dear as one of the most powerful cards ever.
Young Me: Wait, so you can pay 2 mana to get any card you want from your deck? Are those for trade?
Of course it would come to me being slightly dissapointed that my counselor's alpha Demonic Tutor's were not for trade but moving on... Cadaverous Bloom was famously played in one of the first ever combo decks in Magic The Gathering history. Mike Long piloted a deck entitled "Pros Bloom" to victory at Pro-Tour Paris in 1997 (I was 5 when this happened, bonus points if you can guess my age now). The deck abused tutors from the time like Vampiric Tutor and the obviously synergistic interaction between Cadaverous Bloom and Prosperity to set up a game winning Drain Life.
Here's Mike Long's Pros Bloom list from Pro-Tour Paris 1997:
Now that you know a little about me, and a little (or a lot) about the Cadaverous Bloom interactions, here's why I'm posting here. Could Cadaverous Bloom have a legacy deck built around it like it did in the Mirage cycle? (fun fact: Mirage was the first set designed for limited play)
The ideas I've had so far for the deck basically include a few of the staple cards from the original deck including; Cadaverous Bloom (duh), Prosperity, and Drain Life. Now, that's an obvious start for the deck but here's something, legacy is an efficient format, one of the main reasons you could argue that Cadaverous Bloom would do poorly is it's steep CMC. In a format where you can play 5/6 creatures for 2 and an un-targetable and un-blockable 3/1 for 3, a 5 mana enchantment that requires you to discard cards seems unexciting. I think one of the key elements to fixing this problem could be in one of my favorite cards ever... Veteran Explorer! A lot of legacy decks run a low ammount of basics (some don't run any!) and Veteran Explorer can provide some ridiculous ramp for decks that look to take advantage of it (Nic Fit famously runs Veteran Explorer for this very purpose). Because Cadaverous Bloom puts us at least into G/B colors we should obviously be running one of Nic Fits famous synergies with Veteran Explorer... Cabal Therapy. Turn 1 Land ->Cabal Therapy, Turn 2 Land ->Veteran Explorer sac to Cabal Therapy -> Search up two basics -> play a 3 drop is a pretty awesome curve for decks (ab)using this synergy.Veteran Explorer helps with our ramp, and Cabal Therapy provides a sac outlet as well as some awesome hand disruption, cool!
Our third color for this deck is what most argue as the best color in magic... Red! Sorry, I mean Blue. This allows us to run all of the classic legacy counter-magic like Force of Will and Daze and (insert your favorite legacy legal counterspell here). I've been told Daze is pretty polarizing, in that it can make good hands incredible and bad hands just awful, and I tend to agree with this philosophy. I'm not sure that Daze would shine here, this deck does want to ramp and although countering with Daze can be an incredible tempo play, I'm not sure it fits in here... but I could be wrong! (please tell me if I am wrong) This deck originally ran Impulse which is still a pretty powerful card, but again we are playing legacy here where efficiency is important, replacing Impulse is easy because we have Brainstorm, Ponder, and Preordain. While my favorite of those three is Ponder (I love all the Lorwyn art), Brainstorm is basically an auto-include and basically defines the term "Legacy Staple".
Another card that has quickly become popular in legacy and doesn't seem like it will be leaving anytime soon is Deathrite Shaman, a mana dork that provides some serious utility seems like a good choice and it's in 2 of our 3 colors so we'd have no problem with either activation. Another possible choice for ramp would be Life from the Loam, I don't think I'd want to run both Deathrite Shaman and Life from the Loam together, seems slightly redundant and like they'd be working against each other, but I'm not entirely sure. Another card worth noting that is actually run in the original list is Squandered Resources. This card lets your lands provide double the mana because you can tap them for mana, then sac them to squandered resources for even more mana! This is also an awesome synergy with Life from the Loam as you can tap and sac a land to get the lands you already sacrificed this turn back to your hand. Like I said earlier, legacy is filled with efficiently costed permanents, a simple solution to this problem (and another card from Return to Ravnica) is Abrupt Decay and just like Deathrite Shaman its in 2 of our 3 colors, perfect!
So now we've got some ramp, some hand disruption, some permanent destruction, and our end-game strategy. What else can we add? A popular card to use with Veteran Explorer that also fits our colors and provides some pretty great ramp is Phyrexian Tower which we can sac Veteran Explorer to essentially giving us 4 mana and would allow us to play a turn two Cadaverous Bloom... I'm getting excited just thinking about it! Another good ramp card is Green Sun's Zenith. How is it ramp? Well, as you probably know, Green Sun's Zenith for 0 can search up a Dryad Arbor, and being a green deck we run a selection of green creatures that can also be tutored for.
If you read Cadaverous Bloom you'll notice that you exile cards from your hand to add mana, they ARE NOT discarded. While I wish they were discarded (could you imagine? discard 3 lands for 6 mana, life from the loam, go to 4 mana, discard 3 more lands etc. WOW!) they are exiled, making a heavy investment in this enchantment a pretty big risk, strictly because getting your humongous spell countered after exiling 3 cards from your hand would really hurt, a lot, it would suck pretty bad. How do we prevent this from happening? Well, we have Cabal Therapy naming Force of Will, we'd probably run Thoughtseize in the board, and we also have Boseiju, Who Shelters All, let's make sure our big game ending spell goes un-countered. Now, Boseiju, Who Shelters All is a legendary land, so running 4 seems a little meh as drawing two in the opening hand would be kind of annoying, so 3 or 2 seems like a better option. I feel like we could definitely get away with running 3 or 2 if we ran Crop Rotation to get it into play. The only reason I'm saying 3 or 2 is because 3 feels like a lot still because its legendary, but running 2 is scary in a format where running 4 Wasteland is pretty common. Of course if we include Life from the Loam running 2 becomes much less of a risk. Another card to consider for preventing counter-magic is Xantid Swarm, a card I had a hard time trying to remember, seriously I just couldn't remember the name for this card and the correct phrasing for it's ability but I got there eventually. Green creature, fits well in our green deck.
Another thing to consider is that the original Pros Bloom list runs only one Drain Life, which I think is correct, but... what if it gets Thoughtseized? The original list ran Elven Cache to return a lost Drain Life to your hand. Luckily we have a larger card pool than just the Mirage block, thusly we can run Regrowth which does the same thing for half the price, bargain!
Let's pause for a moment and get a list of all the cards I've come up with:
So that's 20 cards, if we ran 4 of's for all of them we'd only have to cut 5 cards, awesome! We're not quite there yet though... let's talk about the mana base. Bad River was essentially the fetch land for the deck, which is awesome, but we're gonna want some updated tech. Let's take out the Bad Rivers and run 4 fetches instead. We can do a split, 2 Misty Rainforest and 2 Verdant Catacombs. I'm emphasizing green mana here and I will also do so with the dual lands as this deck is largely green, if I'm doing so unjustly or I'm leaving the mana base weak please tell me as I've never been particularly good at developing a solid mana base. So, 2 Misty Rainforest and 2 Verdant Catacombs. Undiscovered Paradise was Mirage blocks City of Brass but we have access to duals so we can basically take all the Undiscovered Paradises out for 2 Tropical Island and 2 Bayou. We've also talked about Boseiju, Who Shelters All as a piece of insurance for the deck, I'm going to say we can run 2 copies of it, with Life from the Loam we don't have to worry about losing it to Wasteland and running 2 makes sure we don't draw both in one hand. So with the fetches and the duals and the 2 utility lands that puts us at 10 lands total. Let's add in 2 Phyrexian Towers for their synergy with Veteran Explorer for awesome ramp. Personally, I'd like to fill the rest of the land slots with basic lands, partially because I love my beta basic lands but also because it allows us to again abuse the ramp we can get from Veteran Explorer. I think the sweet-spot in terms of land count for this deck would be around 21/22, but I'm probably doing my math wrong. To hit that number I'd run 4 Forest, 2 Island, and 3 Swamp. This puts us at a comfortable 21 lands.
Now that we've got the land base sorted we can start to fill up the main deck with all the juicy spells we hopefully will be casting. First there's Cadaverous Bloom, the second part of the decks name, ran as a 4 of because it is what the deck intends to do, same goes for Prosperity, another very key piece of the deck. As we discussed earlier Drain Life is run as a 1 of to conserve space and because we really only need one to win. So that puts us at 9 spells and 21 lands, we're at 30 cards right now, halfway there. Veteran Explorer definitely deserves to be a 4 of as it's so integral to our ramp strategy and just has tons of synergy with our deck. Of course to not straight up die to combo we should also be running 4 Cabal Therapy in the main as well. Much like the deck of old I'm also going to run only one Regrowth main deck, also 2 Life from the Loams and 2 Crop Rotations to maximize the effectiveness of Life from the Loam. We will also run 4 Squandered Resources because as I said earlier it allows us to double up our mana from lands and is good synergy with Life from the Loam. 2 Abrupt Decays seems alright for the deck, this could change but I'm starting here with 2. The list will also include a singleton Dryad Arbor which can be tutored by one of the 3 Green Sun's Zeniths. I'm also noticing I'm running really only one creature in this deck, which seems like a mistake in a fast format, so where I'd usually run Deathrite Shaman I'm going to run 4 Wall of Roots for now. I can see this being a bad move but this is a very rough draft of the deck and it will without a doubt see many changes, for now this is what I have. So let's compile it all in a deck-list:
There's a list of cards. This list... is a list. It's an extremely rough list as I've never really put together a full-on legacy deck before and I'm pretty confidant I have my mana base pretty wrong and my card choices might also be pretty sub-par, so feel free to tear it to pieces if I'm going in the wrong direction.
I mainly wanted to get all of my thoughts and ideas posted somewhere and see if I could get some help putting this deck together.
ALL FEEDBACK IS WELCOME (and appreciated)
So yeah, that's my Prosperous Bloom deck so far, thanks for reading!
The list I made falls short of some of the cards that originally made the deck so powerful.
I put together the original version of Pros Bloom and have been solitairing it out at home / playing against friends to learn some of the interactions and will have an updated legacy list soon.
Don't use Prosperity. I ran version of this deck years ago and have died numerous times from giving my opponent their kill card(s). I wouldn't use Drain Life or Consume Spirit as your kill. Banefire is so much better.
If you want to do heavy blue, 4 Force of Will, 4 Meditate and 4 Daze. But, I would still run a good amount of black and at least 1 set of 2 of each of the draw 4 for BBB. Losing life isn't your problem. Drawing enough to exile for 20 damage is.
Every version I played always had 4 Bloom, 4 Squandered and 4 Natural Balance as well. Only ran Gemstone Mine or 4-5 fetches as non-basics and going t1 B, Thoughtsieze, Louts Petal, ESG, Squandered is never bad. t2 land, NB, sac and get 5 basics untapped isn't a bad second go either. From there, you pray. But that's pretty much been the way the ProsBloom player had to be since what, '98?
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Legacy: B Pox WG(R/B) Enchantress WRU Star Spangled Failure
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EDH: BWR Oros GWU Jenara
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Modern: B (small)Pox GWUBR Enchantress RW Stax(less) Records
Banefire seems like a much safer way to kill, I like that a lot.
The spirit guides and petals seem good also, they just add some good speed to the deck which it really needs.
I think I'd prefer the heavy black build you are suggesting as hand disruption is something I prefer over counter-magic.
I completely forgot that I had cut Natural Balance, I love that card.
That sequence of plays you're showing seem like they would pretty cool, Natural Balance to accelerate is just awesome.
Thanks for the suggestions! I'll be sure to give them a try and re-work my list.
It's nice to hear from someone else who has tried decks like this.
Minds Aglow is an upgrade to Prosperity (technically); it's the same effect, but if it gets countered you don't have to spend the mana for the X. I don't expect the opponent will add any mana into it, but you never know.
Minds Aglow is an upgrade to Prosperity (technically); it's the same effect, but if it gets countered you don't have to spend the mana for the X. I don't expect the opponent will add any mana into it, but you never know.
Thanks for pointing that card out, forgot it existed. Another card I have been considering is Mind Spring because it's one sided. The double blue makes it difficult for this deck to cast though.
To cast good old flying spaghetti monster it would have to go like this:
You have 5 lands and a Squandered Resources in play.
You tap all your lands for mana, 5 in the pool now, you then sac all of them to squandered resources to go up to 10 mana in the pool.
Take 4 mana out of the pool to cast Natural Balance bringing you down to 6 mana floating.
You get your 5 lands in play, tap them all for mana, bringing you to 11 mana floating.
Sac 4 lands to bring your mana pool up to 15 and you have one land left in play.
Use your 15 floating mana to cast Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.
This doesn't work with four lands in play.
4 lands, tap and sac for 8 floating
take out 4 for natural balance back down to 4 mana floating
get 5 lands
tap and sac for 14 mana floating
(this COULD work with four lands if you have a mana dork though... Wall of Roots?)
Cadaverous bloom is very much a playable card, it's really just a matter of what kind of deck wants the effect it creates and bloom is also the best option.
Not to harp on the idea either, but I look an emrakul and don't see a point of it within the confines of "pros bloom"
There are to many moving parts to make it a viable plan. I think it works in decks like enchantress or elves simply on the basis that they can vomit out mana and "wasting" a slot on something that can happen frequently in those decks just gives an oops I win generally on turns that those decks would win on anyway. Having to jump through so many hoops for an alternate win con seems silly.
However, if it is the main win condition it could be a different story.
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------------------- Keep Abiding or Get Mangled ------------------
Didn't have much time to play with this yet. Only played vs. Mono-U Draw Go w/ Misthollow Griffin and JtMS. Lands seem fine. In all the games I never drew a Bloom so I have no idea what it could have been. Pretty sure -2 Inquisition +2 Meditate and adding a Demonfire might be good for anti-Surgical stuff. Probe seems fine right now but with an extra R win-con, might drop one. Then again, Consume Spirit might be better to counter act Contract and Bargain if you need to drain something to stay alive.
Sideboard is hard as it's an all in combo. City Of Solitude is probably a 4 of.
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Legacy: B Pox WG(R/B) Enchantress WRU Star Spangled Failure
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EDH: BWR Oros GWU Jenara
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Modern: B (small)Pox GWUBR Enchantress RW Stax(less) Records
Banefire is sweet, but quite a few blue decks out there are maining misdirection like show and tell. I would go for just lauching an emrakul at them. You can surely cast it in this shell, heck, could run two cast both for two extra turns and ensure the win. Fun thing is you can do this to recycle your grave too if need be.
Modern: UUUBlue Man Group
Legacy: UWBMiracles
Edh: UUUThassa Control WWWHokori Stax GGGJolrael, Empress of Land Stompy BBBGriselbrand French List RBGShattergang(Super Villians) RWGHazezon Flicker UBRMarchesa Aggro URGMaelstom Wanderer (Maelstorm)
Hi there I also love Cadaverous Bloom a lot and I played the deck for long time, but I think we need to go other ways to use Bloom in a good way. So you said it, Legacy is a very efficient format and you can't afford to give your opponent the same amount of cards as you. That's why Prosperity isn't the way to go I think. Also there are sometimes hard times to get enough blue mana floating to ensure your next Prosperity, thats why I tried to get lost of blue (Yeah I know it's the best color) because of simply making it easier to stay on 2 colors.
I tried to built a B/ G shell with lots of carddrawing spells like HarmonizeNight's Whisper and kill with Tendrils of agony. This was just a brainstorming for the deck but I think this might be a viable way to get it working. =)
Greetings Heskatet
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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 got the link to work (but only if I copy and paste it). Thanks for sharing that thread I'm about to give it a read right now!
I'll definitely take a look at Harmonize and Night's Whisper. I think Infernal Contract is still good because you can use it to draw a ton and hopefully you are winning the turn you pay half of your life.
Yeah Harmonize and Night's Whisper were examples, Infernal Contract is definitely in, but just look through the thread, I posted a list there, but it was a little brainstorming so it has to be made a bit better I think
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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 have been working on a deck using Natural Balance and Squandered Resources, and just came across this thread. I'll post my thoughts and see if anyone else has ideas.
The Engine
Squandered Resources (SR) and Natural Balance (NB) - The engine. Allows us to generate a lot of mana quickly. NB necessitates playing a lot of basic land, which has pros and cons. Your opponent may also net a couple of lands out of the NB, so you don't want to cast NB until you are ready to go off. I am unsure how many NB you want. Multiples are bad because you'll probably run 10-12 basics to make your first NB reliable. Running more basics makes your second NB better, but hurts the deck's consistency.
Cadaverous Bloom was cut during my tweaking. It's expensive, and you should be able to generate enough mana with SR and NB.
The Win
My initial win conditions all seemed a bit fragile. Banefire requires 20 mana, and I think that is too much. I ruled out Drain Life and its brethren for the same reasons. Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is 15, and while more realistic than Banefire, still seemed like a stretch. The card I settled on was:
Worm Harvest - With SR, we are already dumping lands into our graveyard. Worm Harvest lets us take advantage of that with an instant army. Casting NB for five lands, tapping them, then sacrificing them nets 10 mana. With a land in hand, that lets us cast and Retrace Worm Harvest with at least 5 lands in the yard for 10 (or more) 1/1s.
Green/Black Card Choices
I think the best support for this deck is a traditional black/green discard/attrition setup.
Abrupt Decay - Kills just about anything we need dead.
Thoughtseize - Take away threats to our plan and early threats.
Liliana of the Veil - I don't know if we want Liliana. She helps us survive but doesn't really enhance our game plan, beyond putting Worm Harvest and/or lands in our graveyard via discard.
Smallpox or Pox - Again, I don't know if we want a card like this. Helps slow the opponent, but we are already doing that and doesn't actually help us get there.
Deathrite Shaman - Helps accelerate, provides value late game, randomly hoses other graveyard strategies. Might be good enough.
Cabal Therapy - I think this can make the cut in a version with more creatures. If you are running just Worm Harvest, I don't know if it's worth it.
Crucible of Worlds - We're going to have lands in the graveyard, is 1-2 Crucibles worth it?
Sensei's Divining Top - We need card draw or selection. Think this is the best choice for the moment.
Mox Diamond - Potential turn 1 SR (if we want it). Puts a land in the graveyard for Worm Harvest.
Hymn to Tourach - Do we want more disruption? If we run Mox Diamond, might be more inclined to run this for turn 1 Hymn.
"How in the hell did you just contract twice in a row? You drew 8 cards? .Ragequits.
A couple guys at my shop have been bringing standard decks from past standards in magic history and I've been playing ProsBloom and it's still just so great to play.
I never really bothered with a lot of the combo decks but was always intrigued by certain combos. I think running through prosbloom can really make you a better player. When I first started running it a couple days ago I was just missing its strenghts and self interactions, and I was losing just about every game thinking how horrible it was. But now I am beating better decks, some of the decks that basically own historical standard. I think the better build is the one with meditate and 4 vamp tutors. Gives you solid toolboxing from the sideboard. The mana engine lets you play an intricate game and it give you reach. Its crazy that you can actually play it missing some of the pieces as well. You don't really need the natural balance but it further deepens your reach. Really amazing deck design. This deck really encourages you to see everything as a resource and to become a more skillful player. There's been games where I am contracting and even meditating very early on, and not even considering it a dangerous move because I know the tempo of the opponent's deck. I am just running it through whatever I can by leaving a historic standard game up on cockatrice. Actually I think it would be playable in a historic standard tournament, probably the one format where it is still playable. Not to mention historic standard is just an amazingly cool format.
In my constant search into innovative legacy decks (of which I've found many on this very forum) I was talking with a friend who told me one of the best ways to create new and exciting legacy decks is to look for cards that are sufficiently powerful but for whatever reason don't see play in legacy. I started thinking about what my favorite cards across my history of magic playing were, I came up with a few. Goblin Welder was one. I tried brewing up some grixis/dega artifact control/reanimator lists that seemed interesting to me, but it lacked the synergy I wanted... aside from reanimating a Magister Sphinx and hitting someone with a Hidetsugu's Second Rite (very unlikely). The second card I came up with was Astral Slide, I remembered seeing that card when I was a VERY young magic player and being confused of its purpose, why would you want to exile creatures temporarily? I put together a kind of necra value cycling list with the onslaught lands (Barren Moor, Secluded Steppe, Tranquil Thicket), the goal would be to cycle your lands at the end of your opponents turn to flicker creatures Eternal Witness to get back cards like Vindicate and Pernicious Deed. I also included Life from the Loam which let you basically generate a flickering engine with the cycling lands and Astral Slide. The list also runs Living Wish to allow for sideboard creature (and land) tech. Flickering Harmonic Sliver seemed good, along with Sin Collector and Orzhov Pontiff, I also included Corrupt Court Official in the sideboard as another Living Wish target (it's a $10 Ravenous Rats!).
All of that aside, I've spent some more time scouring my brain for cards I could remember from when I was just a little boy, playing the Apocalypse "Burial" theme deck, can you imagine how confusing Dead Ringers was to me as a child? A card that crossed my mind was the infamous Cadaverous Bloom. Like astral slide it was another enchantment I saw and was confused by. I just didn't understand why you'd ever want to discard your own cards to add mana to your pool... I knew you needed mana to play cards, but how could you play your cards if you were discarding them??? Of course I eventually figured out how the card got played properly thanks to a friendly camp counselor who also introduced me to cards like Demonic Tutor which I still hold near and dear as one of the most powerful cards ever.
Of course it would come to me being slightly dissapointed that my counselor's alpha Demonic Tutor's were not for trade but moving on... Cadaverous Bloom was famously played in one of the first ever combo decks in Magic The Gathering history. Mike Long piloted a deck entitled "Pros Bloom" to victory at Pro-Tour Paris in 1997 (I was 5 when this happened, bonus points if you can guess my age now). The deck abused tutors from the time like Vampiric Tutor and the obviously synergistic interaction between Cadaverous Bloom and Prosperity to set up a game winning Drain Life.
Here's Mike Long's Pros Bloom list from Pro-Tour Paris 1997:
3 Bad River
7 Forest
5 Island
6 Swamp
4 Undiscovered Paradise
Other Spells
4 Cadaverous Bloom
1 Drain Life
1 Elven Cache
1 Emerald Charm
4 Impulse
4 Infernal Contract
2 Memory Lapse
4 Natural Balance
1 Power Sink
4 Prosperity
4 Squandered Resources
1 Three Wishes
4 Vampiric Tutor
3 City of Solitude
4 Elephant Grass
1 Elven Cache
3 Emerald Charm
1 Memory Lapse
1 Power Sink
2 Wall of Roots
Now that you know a little about me, and a little (or a lot) about the Cadaverous Bloom interactions, here's why I'm posting here. Could Cadaverous Bloom have a legacy deck built around it like it did in the Mirage cycle? (fun fact: Mirage was the first set designed for limited play)
The ideas I've had so far for the deck basically include a few of the staple cards from the original deck including; Cadaverous Bloom (duh), Prosperity, and Drain Life. Now, that's an obvious start for the deck but here's something, legacy is an efficient format, one of the main reasons you could argue that Cadaverous Bloom would do poorly is it's steep CMC. In a format where you can play 5/6 creatures for 2 and an un-targetable and un-blockable 3/1 for 3, a 5 mana enchantment that requires you to discard cards seems unexciting. I think one of the key elements to fixing this problem could be in one of my favorite cards ever... Veteran Explorer! A lot of legacy decks run a low ammount of basics (some don't run any!) and Veteran Explorer can provide some ridiculous ramp for decks that look to take advantage of it (Nic Fit famously runs Veteran Explorer for this very purpose). Because Cadaverous Bloom puts us at least into G/B colors we should obviously be running one of Nic Fits famous synergies with Veteran Explorer... Cabal Therapy. Turn 1 Land ->Cabal Therapy, Turn 2 Land ->Veteran Explorer sac to Cabal Therapy -> Search up two basics -> play a 3 drop is a pretty awesome curve for decks (ab)using this synergy.Veteran Explorer helps with our ramp, and Cabal Therapy provides a sac outlet as well as some awesome hand disruption, cool!
Our third color for this deck is what most argue as the best color in magic... Red! Sorry, I mean Blue. This allows us to run all of the classic legacy counter-magic like Force of Will and Daze and (insert your favorite legacy legal counterspell here). I've been told Daze is pretty polarizing, in that it can make good hands incredible and bad hands just awful, and I tend to agree with this philosophy. I'm not sure that Daze would shine here, this deck does want to ramp and although countering with Daze can be an incredible tempo play, I'm not sure it fits in here... but I could be wrong! (please tell me if I am wrong) This deck originally ran Impulse which is still a pretty powerful card, but again we are playing legacy here where efficiency is important, replacing Impulse is easy because we have Brainstorm, Ponder, and Preordain. While my favorite of those three is Ponder (I love all the Lorwyn art), Brainstorm is basically an auto-include and basically defines the term "Legacy Staple".
Another card that has quickly become popular in legacy and doesn't seem like it will be leaving anytime soon is Deathrite Shaman, a mana dork that provides some serious utility seems like a good choice and it's in 2 of our 3 colors so we'd have no problem with either activation. Another possible choice for ramp would be Life from the Loam, I don't think I'd want to run both Deathrite Shaman and Life from the Loam together, seems slightly redundant and like they'd be working against each other, but I'm not entirely sure. Another card worth noting that is actually run in the original list is Squandered Resources. This card lets your lands provide double the mana because you can tap them for mana, then sac them to squandered resources for even more mana! This is also an awesome synergy with Life from the Loam as you can tap and sac a land to get the lands you already sacrificed this turn back to your hand. Like I said earlier, legacy is filled with efficiently costed permanents, a simple solution to this problem (and another card from Return to Ravnica) is Abrupt Decay and just like Deathrite Shaman its in 2 of our 3 colors, perfect!
So now we've got some ramp, some hand disruption, some permanent destruction, and our end-game strategy. What else can we add? A popular card to use with Veteran Explorer that also fits our colors and provides some pretty great ramp is Phyrexian Tower which we can sac Veteran Explorer to essentially giving us 4 mana and would allow us to play a turn two Cadaverous Bloom... I'm getting excited just thinking about it! Another good ramp card is Green Sun's Zenith. How is it ramp? Well, as you probably know, Green Sun's Zenith for 0 can search up a Dryad Arbor, and being a green deck we run a selection of green creatures that can also be tutored for.
If you read Cadaverous Bloom you'll notice that you exile cards from your hand to add mana, they ARE NOT discarded. While I wish they were discarded (could you imagine? discard 3 lands for 6 mana, life from the loam, go to 4 mana, discard 3 more lands etc. WOW!) they are exiled, making a heavy investment in this enchantment a pretty big risk, strictly because getting your humongous spell countered after exiling 3 cards from your hand would really hurt, a lot, it would suck pretty bad. How do we prevent this from happening? Well, we have Cabal Therapy naming Force of Will, we'd probably run Thoughtseize in the board, and we also have Boseiju, Who Shelters All, let's make sure our big game ending spell goes un-countered. Now, Boseiju, Who Shelters All is a legendary land, so running 4 seems a little meh as drawing two in the opening hand would be kind of annoying, so 3 or 2 seems like a better option. I feel like we could definitely get away with running 3 or 2 if we ran Crop Rotation to get it into play. The only reason I'm saying 3 or 2 is because 3 feels like a lot still because its legendary, but running 2 is scary in a format where running 4 Wasteland is pretty common. Of course if we include Life from the Loam running 2 becomes much less of a risk. Another card to consider for preventing counter-magic is Xantid Swarm, a card I had a hard time trying to remember, seriously I just couldn't remember the name for this card and the correct phrasing for it's ability but I got there eventually. Green creature, fits well in our green deck.
Another thing to consider is that the original Pros Bloom list runs only one Drain Life, which I think is correct, but... what if it gets Thoughtseized? The original list ran Elven Cache to return a lost Drain Life to your hand. Luckily we have a larger card pool than just the Mirage block, thusly we can run Regrowth which does the same thing for half the price, bargain!
Let's pause for a moment and get a list of all the cards I've come up with:
The Core
Cadaverous Bloom
Prosperity
Drain Life
The Ramp
Veteran Explorer
Deathrite Shaman
Phyrexian Tower
Life from the Loam
Green Sun's Zenith
Dryad Arbor
Crop Rotation
Hand Disruption
Cabal Therapy
Thoughtseize
Blue Stuff
Force of Will
Daze
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Insurance
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Xantid Swarm
Regrowth
So that's 20 cards, if we ran 4 of's for all of them we'd only have to cut 5 cards, awesome! We're not quite there yet though... let's talk about the mana base. Bad River was essentially the fetch land for the deck, which is awesome, but we're gonna want some updated tech. Let's take out the Bad Rivers and run 4 fetches instead. We can do a split, 2 Misty Rainforest and 2 Verdant Catacombs. I'm emphasizing green mana here and I will also do so with the dual lands as this deck is largely green, if I'm doing so unjustly or I'm leaving the mana base weak please tell me as I've never been particularly good at developing a solid mana base. So, 2 Misty Rainforest and 2 Verdant Catacombs. Undiscovered Paradise was Mirage blocks City of Brass but we have access to duals so we can basically take all the Undiscovered Paradises out for 2 Tropical Island and 2 Bayou. We've also talked about Boseiju, Who Shelters All as a piece of insurance for the deck, I'm going to say we can run 2 copies of it, with Life from the Loam we don't have to worry about losing it to Wasteland and running 2 makes sure we don't draw both in one hand. So with the fetches and the duals and the 2 utility lands that puts us at 10 lands total. Let's add in 2 Phyrexian Towers for their synergy with Veteran Explorer for awesome ramp. Personally, I'd like to fill the rest of the land slots with basic lands, partially because I love my beta basic lands but also because it allows us to again abuse the ramp we can get from Veteran Explorer. I think the sweet-spot in terms of land count for this deck would be around 21/22, but I'm probably doing my math wrong. To hit that number I'd run 4 Forest, 2 Island, and 3 Swamp. This puts us at a comfortable 21 lands.
Now that we've got the land base sorted we can start to fill up the main deck with all the juicy spells we hopefully will be casting. First there's Cadaverous Bloom, the second part of the decks name, ran as a 4 of because it is what the deck intends to do, same goes for Prosperity, another very key piece of the deck. As we discussed earlier Drain Life is run as a 1 of to conserve space and because we really only need one to win. So that puts us at 9 spells and 21 lands, we're at 30 cards right now, halfway there. Veteran Explorer definitely deserves to be a 4 of as it's so integral to our ramp strategy and just has tons of synergy with our deck. Of course to not straight up die to combo we should also be running 4 Cabal Therapy in the main as well. Much like the deck of old I'm also going to run only one Regrowth main deck, also 2 Life from the Loams and 2 Crop Rotations to maximize the effectiveness of Life from the Loam. We will also run 4 Squandered Resources because as I said earlier it allows us to double up our mana from lands and is good synergy with Life from the Loam. 2 Abrupt Decays seems alright for the deck, this could change but I'm starting here with 2. The list will also include a singleton Dryad Arbor which can be tutored by one of the 3 Green Sun's Zeniths. I'm also noticing I'm running really only one creature in this deck, which seems like a mistake in a fast format, so where I'd usually run Deathrite Shaman I'm going to run 4 Wall of Roots for now. I can see this being a bad move but this is a very rough draft of the deck and it will without a doubt see many changes, for now this is what I have. So let's compile it all in a deck-list:
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Tropical Island
2 Bayou
2 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
5 Forest
3 Island
4 Swamp
2 Phyrexian Tower
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Wall of Roots
1 Dryad Arbor
Other Spells
4 Cadaverous Bloom
1 Drain Life
1 Regrowth
2 Life from the Loam
2 Crop Rotation
3 Green Sun’s Zenith
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Abrupt Decay
4 Prosperity
4 Squandered Resources
There's a list of cards. This list... is a list. It's an extremely rough list as I've never really put together a full-on legacy deck before and I'm pretty confidant I have my mana base pretty wrong and my card choices might also be pretty sub-par, so feel free to tear it to pieces if I'm going in the wrong direction.
I mainly wanted to get all of my thoughts and ideas posted somewhere and see if I could get some help putting this deck together.
ALL FEEDBACK IS WELCOME
(and appreciated)
So yeah, that's my Prosperous Bloom deck so far, thanks for reading!
-Nathan
This deck is now called high tide in legacy and is mono blue. It no longer gives your opponent answers as well since blue suns zenith is now a card.
-----The Legacy Flowchart-----
Tiny Leaders Overlord
I put together the original version of Pros Bloom and have been solitairing it out at home / playing against friends to learn some of the interactions and will have an updated legacy list soon.
Regardless of the build I would always include 1 Banefire, 4 Lotus Petal, 4 Elvish Spirit Guide and Possible 1 Simian Spirit Guide.
If playing a more heavy black version, 4 Thoughtseize and 2-3 Inquisition of Kozilek. Cruel Bargain and Infernal Contract are pretty much how you're going to draw deck.
If you want to do heavy blue, 4 Force of Will, 4 Meditate and 4 Daze. But, I would still run a good amount of black and at least 1 set of 2 of each of the draw 4 for BBB. Losing life isn't your problem. Drawing enough to exile for 20 damage is.
Every version I played always had 4 Bloom, 4 Squandered and 4 Natural Balance as well. Only ran Gemstone Mine or 4-5 fetches as non-basics and going t1 B, Thoughtsieze, Louts Petal, ESG, Squandered is never bad. t2 land, NB, sac and get 5 basics untapped isn't a bad second go either. From there, you pray. But that's pretty much been the way the ProsBloom player had to be since what, '98?
B Pox
WG(R/B) Enchantress
WRU Star Spangled Failure
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BWR Oros
GWU Jenara
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B (small)Pox
GWUBR Enchantress
RW Stax(less) Records
The spirit guides and petals seem good also, they just add some good speed to the deck which it really needs.
I think I'd prefer the heavy black build you are suggesting as hand disruption is something I prefer over counter-magic.
I completely forgot that I had cut Natural Balance, I love that card.
That sequence of plays you're showing seem like they would pretty cool, Natural Balance to accelerate is just awesome.
Thanks for the suggestions! I'll be sure to give them a try and re-work my list.
It's nice to hear from someone else who has tried decks like this.
I do agree with you on this one, but I often wonder if Cadaverous Bloom could/would work in black/green enchantress deck.
Then I wonder if Natural Balance and Squandered Resources could be used in casting Emrakul...
In his Second 100 days - Yawgmoth's Bargain is unrestricted in Vintage.
What is going to happen in the Next 100 days!!!
Thanks for pointing that card out, forgot it existed. Another card I have been considering is Mind Spring because it's one sided. The double blue makes it difficult for this deck to cast though.
Natural Balance is indeed an awesome card, and when used properly I think it has some pretty insane potential.
I like the Natural Balance + Squandered Resources ramp plan.
To cast good old flying spaghetti monster it would have to go like this:
You have 5 lands and a Squandered Resources in play.
You tap all your lands for mana, 5 in the pool now, you then sac all of them to squandered resources to go up to 10 mana in the pool.
Take 4 mana out of the pool to cast Natural Balance bringing you down to 6 mana floating.
You get your 5 lands in play, tap them all for mana, bringing you to 11 mana floating.
Sac 4 lands to bring your mana pool up to 15 and you have one land left in play.
Use your 15 floating mana to cast Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.
This doesn't work with four lands in play.
4 lands, tap and sac for 8 floating
take out 4 for natural balance back down to 4 mana floating
get 5 lands
tap and sac for 14 mana floating
(this COULD work with four lands if you have a mana dork though... Wall of Roots?)
Not to harp on the idea either, but I look an emrakul and don't see a point of it within the confines of "pros bloom"
There are to many moving parts to make it a viable plan. I think it works in decks like enchantress or elves simply on the basis that they can vomit out mana and "wasting" a slot on something that can happen frequently in those decks just gives an oops I win generally on turns that those decks would win on anyway. Having to jump through so many hoops for an alternate win con seems silly.
However, if it is the main win condition it could be a different story.
-----The Legacy Flowchart-----
Tiny Leaders Overlord
-----The Legacy Flowchart-----
Tiny Leaders Overlord
3 Infernal Contract
3 Gitaxian Probe
4 Dark Ritual
4 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Squandered Resources
4 Cadaverous Bloom
4 Natural Balance
4 Lotus Petal
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Banefire
7 Swamp
7 Forest
Didn't have much time to play with this yet. Only played vs. Mono-U Draw Go w/ Misthollow Griffin and JtMS. Lands seem fine. In all the games I never drew a Bloom so I have no idea what it could have been. Pretty sure -2 Inquisition +2 Meditate and adding a Demonfire might be good for anti-Surgical stuff. Probe seems fine right now but with an extra R win-con, might drop one. Then again, Consume Spirit might be better to counter act Contract and Bargain if you need to drain something to stay alive.
Sideboard is hard as it's an all in combo. City Of Solitude is probably a 4 of.
B Pox
WG(R/B) Enchantress
WRU Star Spangled Failure
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BWR Oros
GWU Jenara
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B (small)Pox
GWUBR Enchantress
RW Stax(less) Records
Also exsanguinate is a pretty sick spell as well
Draft it Here!
UUUBlue Man Group
Legacy:
UWBMiracles
Edh:
UUUThassa Control
WWWHokori Stax
GGGJolrael, Empress of Land Stompy
BBBGriselbrand French List
RBGShattergang(Super Villians)
RWGHazezon Flicker
UBRMarchesa Aggro
URGMaelstom Wanderer (Maelstorm)
You might find that link here interesting: http://mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/181780-prosbloom-in-2013] I hope it works (If not, the thread is named Prosbloom in 2013 in the legacy developing forum) Can anyone help me to get the link working pls?
I don't get why it isn't displayed
I tried to built a B/ G shell with lots of carddrawing spells like Harmonize Night's Whisper and kill with Tendrils of agony. This was just a brainstorming for the deck but I think this might be a viable way to get it working. =)
Greetings Heskatet
"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
I'll definitely take a look at Harmonize and Night's Whisper. I think Infernal Contract is still good because you can use it to draw a ton and hopefully you are winning the turn you pay half of your life.
Thanks again!
"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
My Haves/Wants Thread
The Engine
Squandered Resources (SR) and Natural Balance (NB) - The engine. Allows us to generate a lot of mana quickly. NB necessitates playing a lot of basic land, which has pros and cons. Your opponent may also net a couple of lands out of the NB, so you don't want to cast NB until you are ready to go off. I am unsure how many NB you want. Multiples are bad because you'll probably run 10-12 basics to make your first NB reliable. Running more basics makes your second NB better, but hurts the deck's consistency.
Cadaverous Bloom was cut during my tweaking. It's expensive, and you should be able to generate enough mana with SR and NB.
The Win
My initial win conditions all seemed a bit fragile. Banefire requires 20 mana, and I think that is too much. I ruled out Drain Life and its brethren for the same reasons. Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is 15, and while more realistic than Banefire, still seemed like a stretch. The card I settled on was:
Worm Harvest - With SR, we are already dumping lands into our graveyard. Worm Harvest lets us take advantage of that with an instant army. Casting NB for five lands, tapping them, then sacrificing them nets 10 mana. With a land in hand, that lets us cast and Retrace Worm Harvest with at least 5 lands in the yard for 10 (or more) 1/1s.
Green/Black Card Choices
I think the best support for this deck is a traditional black/green discard/attrition setup.
Abrupt Decay - Kills just about anything we need dead.
Thoughtseize - Take away threats to our plan and early threats.
Inquisition of Kozilek - See above.
Other card considerations
Liliana of the Veil - I don't know if we want Liliana. She helps us survive but doesn't really enhance our game plan, beyond putting Worm Harvest and/or lands in our graveyard via discard.
Smallpox or Pox - Again, I don't know if we want a card like this. Helps slow the opponent, but we are already doing that and doesn't actually help us get there.
Deathrite Shaman - Helps accelerate, provides value late game, randomly hoses other graveyard strategies. Might be good enough.
Cabal Therapy - I think this can make the cut in a version with more creatures. If you are running just Worm Harvest, I don't know if it's worth it.
Crucible of Worlds - We're going to have lands in the graveyard, is 1-2 Crucibles worth it?
Sensei's Divining Top - We need card draw or selection. Think this is the best choice for the moment.
Mox Diamond - Potential turn 1 SR (if we want it). Puts a land in the graveyard for Worm Harvest.
Hymn to Tourach - Do we want more disruption? If we run Mox Diamond, might be more inclined to run this for turn 1 Hymn.
Third Color?
A third color could open up:
Banefire - Alternate kill.
Second Sunrise or Faith's Reward - Can generate a lot of mana sacrificing all lands to SR and casting of of these to do it all again.
Ponder or Brainstorm or blue card draw - Blue might help filter for the cards we want.
Those are my thoughts for now. Gotta run, but interested to see anyone else has ideas.
"How in the hell did you just contract twice in a row? You drew 8 cards? .Ragequits.
A couple guys at my shop have been bringing standard decks from past standards in magic history and I've been playing ProsBloom and it's still just so great to play.