There's still work to be done, mostly playtesting matchups and whatnot. I chose green as the third color for the option of enchantment/artifact removal (and Drop of Honey could work well to remove what creatures they do get into play). I also like the option of another Portent in the form of Natural Selection. I don't get to playtest much, and I know this is a particularly unfun deck to playtest against with all the shuffling going on, but any help would be tremendously appreciated!
Original Post:
I've been brainstorming this deck ever since my Modern Top Control deck showed promising results against Tier 1 Vintage. Here is my preliminary list:
I suppose the plan is obvious - Control the opponents' draws. There are various ways of doing this:
- Lantern of Insight + Codex Shredder/Cathartic Adept or Extract/Surgical Extraction/Extirpate/Ghost Quarter (shuffle away a card you don't want them to draw when it is on top)
- Field of Dreams + Codex Shredder/Cathartic Adept or Extract/Surgical Extraction/Extirpate/Ghost Quarter/Lantern of Insight (shuffle away a card you don't want them to draw when it is on top)
- Psychic Surgery + Extract/Extirpate/Surgical Extraction/Ghost Quarter/Lantern of Insight
The optimum plan is often to go after the manabase and extract it, but the deck can be played according to the situation. Gitaxian Probe allows us to see what they do have, and thus, what they want/need to draw. Cosi's Trickster becomes quite the threat with 20 shuffle effects (not including any shuffle effects the opponent is already running).
I have thought of some alternate cards as well.
- Daze - Especially if we go after their lands.
- Archive Trap - Makes it extremely easy to neuter a large number of lands/threats quickly.
- Chain of Vapor - Bounces Leylines/threats, and if the opponent does get silly and sac lands to copy it, that gives more land targets for Extirpates/Surgical Extractions. Chances are they will have a bit more trouble replaying their permanents than we will.
EDIT - I realized after a bit of testing that Gitaxian Probe could probably be replaced with Chain of Vapor to a good amount of benefit. Extirpate and Surgical Extraction let you see their hand anyways, and those combined with Extract can let you deduce their hand if you write out the opp's decklist and have a decent knowledge of the meta/deck archetypes.
IMO you shoul play cards like enlightened tutor, lotus petal, sensei top. Some artifact lands, glimmervoids, ancient tombs and city of traitors to speed up. The faster you get the lock the better it is.
Don't forget that in legacy there are cards like brainstorm, ponder, preordain, semsei top. They can change the order of the top cards. There are wastelands too. I had the same idea some months ago, I would like to work on it!
Same basic idea, but centered more around artifacts. Artificer's Intuition lets you cycle extra artifact lands or unneeded trinkets for the ones you do need. Nothing in the deck is over CMC 2 or needs more than 3 mana to activate, so you can easily run off the two basics and a mana bauble to play around Blood Moon orWasteland, or just get extra value from the artifact lands. You also have the Painter/Grindstone combo to finish the game instantly, should you draw into it (and the Grindstone can actually be tutored via the Intuition).
The numbers are rough and probably need to be adjusted, especially given the Intuition tutor capability.
IMO:
-4 extirpate, -4psychic s., -4 extract, -1 surgical, +4 lotus p, +2-3 sensei top, + 3/2 enlighted tutor, +4 transmute artifact.
If you wanna use ghostquarter just replace it with wasteland.
-4 ghostquarter, +2/3ancient tomb +4 glimmervoid. +1 seat synod, -1/2 vault of w. At the least we need 15/16 lands +4 lotus p, + mox opal and ancient tomb.
-2 mox diamond (not synergic), -2/1 mox opal +4 brainstorm.
-2 arteficier int. +4 thoughtseize
-2 ghoulcall., +2 pyxis.
-1 field dreams
Without the Artificer's Intuition, there's much less reason to run the artifact lands, except for turning on Mox Opal, which is also less relevant. Probably just go back to fetches/duals.
I'm also not sure what this would do with 21 mana sources including sol lands. Literally the most expensive line of play this deck ever wants to see is double Transmute Artifact into Painter's Servant and Grindstone, then activating the stone all in one turn. That's at most 8 mana, and if their hand is under control then spreading over two turns is enough.
An explosive, empty handed, turn 1 is nice, but that's a lot of slots and self-damage that you probably can't afford. With 85% of the action being only 1 drops, a 2 land hand will still empty out on turn 3 or 4 with no other land draws. With a single fast mana plus 2 lands in the opening 7 this deck empties hand on turn 2. If it hits several pieces of fast mana, it could have no hand on turn 1, and nothing much to do with all the mana it has. Most Legacy decks run 20 or less lands for a reason, and that's even running 2 and 3 drops, not the collection of almost exclusively 1 drops that this deck is.
This also removes almost the entire extraction engine to buff up tutoring and digging. What, exactly is it tutoring/transmuting for? Draw control trinkets are nice, but it needs to have some other game plan at some point, or tempo/aggro decks are going to run it over. The best line now seems to be to try for the Grindstone/Painter combo, but honestly, I'd put that in mostly as a compact 2 card way to close out a game quickly once you'd achieved a mana/hand lock. Nothing else in this deck is going to beat a single resolved Nimble Mongoose or Delver of Secrets or any deck at all with Bridge from Below or a Reanimate type card anywhere in the 75.
thnkr's original build, which my deck was just a streamlined form of, is primarily aimed at attacking manabases, rather than attacking action which is the typical plan for the Modern incarnation of Top Control. In Legacy this works better because so many decks are running at most 1 or 2 basics and often less than 20 total lands. Even control decks only tend to run 22-23. If they t1 crack a fetch into a dual and you follow up by Quarter/Wasteland the dual and then Extirpate/Surgically Extract both the fetch and the dual you could remove as much as a half of their total mana base. Thoughtseize doesn't put lands in bin to attack, and with only 3 Surgical Extraction, you couldn't be sure of having them anyhow.
As to why choose Ghost Quarter over Wasteland? It's not strictly budget. First, unlike Wasteland, it can make them shuffle, which plays into Psychic Surgery (and Cosi's Trickster if you're running that). Again, most decks only run at most 1 or 2 basics, and if you Ghost Quarter their basic... they have no others to fetch, and it turns into a Wasteland that actually can hit basics. At worst, they do have another basic, but you've kept them off colors, which for many of the 3 and 4 color decks can be vital. Of course, there are decks that have enough basics (Maverick, Miracles, D&T all run a decent proportion of basics), but even then you can sometimes keep them off easy access to colors. If you really wanted to go all in on this plan Dust Bowl, Smallpox and Sinkhole would be the first set of cards I was looking at adding, with maybe Spreading Algae, depending on how heavy dual swamps were in my meta. Unlike the D&T style of mana denial, Rishadan Port isn't very good for this deck, as we'd really like the non-basics in bin where we can extract them and all other copies of them forever, nor can we play our low cost spells via an Aether Vial.
Also, in retrospect, the Cosi's Trickster actually seems more relevant than I first thought. The combination with the "make them shuffle" plan is pretty good, but being able to handle any 1 or 2 drops they can land is important, and a Trickster should grow bigger than most creatures and be able to potentially race the few it can't block. At the very least, it's a chump blocker for something bigger. Bitterblossom could potentially fill the same role, and also blocks some relevant things that Trickster doesn't, namely Griselbrand and Insectile Aberration, and against other decks it's a fairly reasonable clock. This leads into another idea, though...
One thing Fuga suggests that I do like is having at least some form of targeted discard to get cards to where you can use Extirpate and Surgical on them. Thoughtseize is good, but if you were to go with the Bitterblossom approach, Cabal Therapy could be even better, as you can flash it back for the "free" cost of a 1 life token. Like thoughtseize it can't strip lands, but it does hit other non-land mana sources like baubles and rituals, and with all the extracts and probes and seeing draws, you're almost never going to whiff. That makes it 2 cards discarded for 1 mana and the 1 life for a Bitterblossom token, which is a pretty sweet deal. Even without the Bitterblossom, it's still not horrible, and it can just hang out in the graveyard until you did eventually find a Bitterblossom to flash it back.
You give up the actual card advantage of the Ancestral Vision for the virtual card advantage and blockers/clock in the Bitterblossom/Cabal Therapy package. Therapies provide more looks at the hand, making me comfortable with shaving a Field of Dreams and also remove things from hand offsetting losing a few Extracts, which were already the worst part of the Extraction Engine section. Finally, you lose the Grindstone/Painter combo to return 2 Cosi's Tricksters as part of the chump block or clock brigade. And to squeeze it all in, a few more minor adjustments to the fast mana package.
The deck is still very mana efficient (six total CMC 2 cards, one 2 activation), but it might need one or two more mana sources just to prevent mulligans, which I'd probably remove the remaining Extracts or shave another Field of Dreams for. As is, it has a 92% chance to see 1 mana in the opening 7, 65% to see 2 in the opening and 72% to see 2 by turn 2. Going up to 19 mana sources would change that to 94% for at least 1 in the opening hand, 72% for at least 2 in opening and 80% to see 2 by turn 2.
That looks a lot more cohesive. Transmute or Tutor into Bridge gives you play against decks which can deploy a threat through hand control.
Still feels very mana heavy. 21 mana sources in a deck that tops out at two CMC 3 artifacts and one 3 activation cost. And no real draw engine besides a set of Brainstorms, so you're not going to frequently need to play more than 1 or 2 spells in a turn past the first. By comparison, Delver decks mostly run 15-19 mana sources, depending on version. Even Miracles, which is a slow control deck that's hard casting cmc 4 planeswalkers like JtMS is only using 22 mana sources. Reanimator, which runs a very similar mana curve to this deck, is 14-15 lands and 4 Lotus Petals. I think you could safely drop the 2 Ancient Tomb and up your count on Surgical Extraction. You really need all the Surgicals, because if your win conditions are only either slow mill via Shredders or combo mill via Grindstone, you have to deal with all the decks that have Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or other "shuffles back into deck" effects.
You're in blue; unsure why you need 4 Lanterns + 2 Field of dreams. That's a lot of useless cards. I'd try and do a 2/3 split and rely on more Ponders/Brainstorms/Tops to get you there.
Ponders give much needed shuffling. You should swap Glimmers for fetches as well. I'd honestly take an Omnishow deck or monoU painter deck and swap 1-for-1 until you get something that resembles what you want
The Lanterns and Field of Dreams are there so that you know the opponent's topdeck - If you don't like it, you use a shuffle effect to get rid of it, or you use a mill card to get rid of it. That's why it's called "Top Control"
I get it; but you don't need six. Six is too many.
Either way; *again*; you're in blue. Multiples of those cards are *useless.* They grant card disadvantage for information. What you want is to be card neutral most of the time and protect your piece when it comes down. Having 3-5 of those Lanterns/Fields will be enough when you have all of your searching components. Having 6 means you'll often have 2+ in a starting hand; meaning you have to brainstorm them away to get useful things into your hand.
What's worst is that your deck is prone to brain-locks because you'll brainstorm without being able to shuffle your deck.
In other words:
Do what I said. Add fetches and Ponders to shuffle your library; drop the over-redundancy to make a more potent/reliable deck.
Basically we can mill our deck. So brainstorm+mill is equal to fetch if we have codex/ghoulcaller/pyxis. But if you want you can test it with fetches and let us know about
About the lanter ecc. maybe you're right. 4x lanter and 1x field. But what are you goin to put in 1x empty slot? Tormord's crypt/relic of progenitus?
We need glimmervoid for colored mana.
Same for artifact lands to use mox opal fisrt turn.
You should try to start with thoughtseize+surgical. Awesome.
@DaR: emrakul is not a problem with pyxis. Just exile if from the top as in modern or surgical it or use tormord's crypt ability in response of trigger. That's all
@DaR: emrakul is not a problem with pyxis. Just exile if from the top as in modern or surgical it or use tormord's crypt ability in response of trigger. That's all
It's not a problem if you have a Crypt on the table or the Emrakul is revealed on top and you have Pyxis on the table and it's untapped. If you're trying to combo out with the Painter/Grindstone combo, Pyxis doesn't help, and you've just bricked yourself for at least a turn, if not reset their whole deck so that they now have access to all their answers you previously milled away. And no matter how good your hand control setup is, the threat density in most legacy decks will not let you get away with the long slow mill plan. You either need to be permanently removing things from their deck like thnkr's version of the deck, or you need to reliably hit the painter combo with consistent answers for reshuffling cards.
Don't get me wrong. I love this deck in Modern, and think there could be a legitimate Legacy deck using some of the same ideas. But Legacy has a lot more answers and lines of play than Modern does, and a lot more decks have things like Emrakul, Progenitus, Blightsteel. That's because several of the best archetypes are about cheating or ramping those into play like Show&Tell, Reanimator, Tinfins, MUD, and so on. Likewise, there are a lot more decks that play almost completely out of the graveyard, like Dredge and Oops All Spells, and they happily thank you for putting a few more of their cards in the graveyard to help them go off faster. Taking the Modern game plan and simply adding Legacy dig and tutors in place of Modern ones is not going to work very well. You need to adapt to the things that broken Legacy decks can do. That's why having at least a full set of Surgicals would be my recommendation.
That's also why I think thnkr's basic approach is probably the stronger one to take in Legacy than the classic Modern Top Control plan. Attacking somewhat fragile Legacy manabases gives you time, and having 8 multi-card extractions and another 4-6 that hit single cards, but repeatedly, lets you close out their gameplan with that time.
I have a few reasons why I chose to run eight Lantern effects. It's explained rather well in the article on the front page. Also, additional Lanterns offer shuffle effects that allow you to shuffle away the opponent's topdeck, and to assist when you have a Psychic Surgery in play. The only card that really sucks in multiples is Field of Dreams, but I think reliability of the core concept and gameplan makes up for that slight drawback of that.
The deck is only prone to brain-locks if you insist on running Brainstorm. I already added fetches (not in real life - I save for retirement responsibly).
I do think that Tricksters might do better in the sideboard, and cutting Probes altogether might be better, in order to make room for removal. You remove one creature in play, then remove all copies of them from the game. If you read the article, it does point out that quite a few Legacy decks that run creature threats run around four copies of the same three creatures or so. That alone makes it a bit easier to neuter quite a few threats out of the average Legacy deck.
As far as Blightsteel, Progenitus, and Emrakul, if you look at my core concept and original decklist, you'll notice that there are eight instant speed exile effects that you can play with those triggers on the stack. That's not including the four Extract that let you go through their library and exile them pre-emptively. I suppose ditching that conceptual direction of the deck could be a possibility, but I would disagree that it would be as effective. I feel like the amount of "mill" that is already in the deck, thanks to eight "Shredders" and eight "Extirpates", might be underestimated. This is negating the "mill" that Psychic Surgery does with twenty shuffle effects and the additional cards from Ghost Quarters and Extracts. Yes, it's slower than many other mill decks, but that's because this doesn't go balls-to-the-wall mill. It's a very controllish mill. Sometimes you don't *want* to Extirpate yet, because they have a dead card on top, and you want them to draw that dead card.
On that note, those exile effects are important parts to the core concept. This version does not play like the Modern Top Control in that sense. Part of the reason I went this route instead of my RG Modern route is that I have recently been going through and paying close attention to what decks have been placing well at the SCG Legacy Opens. DaR, you mention Dredge, Reanimator, and Oops - Those decks had a few problems when people were sideboarding in Surgical Extractions. This deck runs them main, plus Extirpates, and then Extract on top of that. Oops and Dredge each usually have one enabler that they Dread Return that a single Extract effect will shut down, and Reanimator has trouble when you exile their target with their reanimating spell on the stack.
Combo decks have some difficulty when you exile a key piece to the combo - For example, against Sneak & Show, if you start exiling either Sneak or Show, you've essentially cut off a large portion of the deck. If you exile both (which isn't that difficult with 8 that exile all of a card and 4 that exile single cards - and you control a large portion of what they draw due to the consistency of having a topdeck-control combo), then it neuters the deck entirely.
I think we are in agreement with the proper direction for this deck, DaR. I mentioned dropping Gitaxian Probe and moving Trickster to the sideboard in order to shore up some of the more aggro matches, packing in some removal in their places maybe. I want to see what sort of creature-based decks this would have the most trouble with and use removal that is specific to those first, and then tweak the sideboard from there. What would you suggest?
I think running a tax/rack engine with some terminus and entreats could be a great way to seal up a game. Its kind of interesting way to be a countertop deck but instead of countering, we just deny draws. Tax/rack can help you dig for your wincons, and you could play janky stuff like timesifter, which would essentially lock your opponent out with a few of your pieces.
Also if you want to go full throttle into land denial, look up encroach. It's almost completely unknown, but i feel could possibly work here. Spreading algae can do some serious damage if you run urborg too. Lotus petal/ancient tomb bloodmoon is a very tempting line of play as well, as it also turns our painlands "off".
I would run 4 field of dreams and 4 forces with more blue in general, spell pierces get better and could become hard counters if we deny lands hard enough. Force is so you dont auto lose to ant/tes/belcher/sneak, which can all win with their opening hand.
As fast mana i would run 4 petals, 4 mox diamonds, 4 ancient tombs minimum. This deck needs the lock Asap to not get run over.
Also, since this version doesnt use bridge as much as the modern version does, we could use terminus, which gets rid of everything pesky we could encounter. With terminus comes brainstorm or jace or both. Speaking of jace and all this fast mana, I think and incredible line of play would be following up the lock with a t2 jace, solidifying your position and setting up for the win.
These are just some of the things I've thought of admiring top control and playing countertop miracles in legacy. The engine is different, the goal is the same. Deny as many lines of play possible until you win.
I feel like rest in peace or planar void belongs here as well.
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)
Top control's engine is a win con in itself. You want to run as many 1 cmc cards that can mill as you can. 4 codex shredder, 4 bells, and 4 pyxis.
The win con of the deck is after you have 3 or so of these in play your opponent is locked out of the game. You force them to never be able to draw a threat.
This means with ancient tomb and the like, you can literally lock them turn 1. Your plays after playing your fateseal combo is just dealing with threats from their hand. Surgical extraction is a must, as is extirpate. Most people only run 14 or so cards that can actively win the game in their decks. The rest are cards that generally protect those cards, kill your stuff, etc. If you remove their 12-14 threats from their deck they physically cannot win anymore.
You'd be surprised by the fact that casting surgical extraction + extirpate even just 3 times is enough to neuter their chances of top decking a threat down to almost 0. Combined with the fateseal lock and chances are by turn 2-3 they physically wont be able to do anything.
The fateseal combo has a big weakness, and that is dredge. That's why the surgical extraction x4 is so nasty against dredge. Being able to snipe their first couple of dredge pieces they drop before they get a dredge off is generally enough to slow them down enough for you to start locking them.
Dredge is super hard to navigate and our hardest matchup, but with surgical extraction and leylines in the SB it can be done.
So I've been messing around with the deck a bit, and I've come up with the following non-budget list (I'm actually building mine with my budget in mind, but for sake of this forum and this deck, I'll stick to talking about the non-budget):
Some had suggested using Ponder, but I realized that Portent is pretty much strictly better in this deck, as it assists in controlling their draws, and allows us to shuffle their deck if need be (for Psychic Surgery).
Sideboard considerations that I have are as follows: Archive Trap, Chain of Vapor - I'd mentioned these in the original post. Cosi's Trickster - I'd moved this to a possible sideboard card rather than main deck. I found that Maze of Ith was better at holding down creatures than Trickster, but against creatureless decks Trickster could come in. Especially after they've sided out much of their creature hate. Inquisition of Kozilek/Duress - For combo-heavy environments.
I think that in an established (higher tier) meta, going after the manabase is still the strongest gameplan. After a single fetch, and one Ghost Quarter or Wasteland from us, that's usually a good 1/3 of their manabase most of the time. I haven't actually tested with the Wastelands yet, so I'm not sure if that addition can support the mana costs of all the cards. The reason I think that it's worth testing is that it will typically set them much farther back than us anyways, and this method should absolutely destroy the typical manabase of a developed meta.
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Lantern of Insight
4 Codex Shredder
4 Cathartic Adept
4 Psychic Surgery
4 Extract
4 Extirpate
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Portent
There's still work to be done, mostly playtesting matchups and whatnot. I chose green as the third color for the option of enchantment/artifact removal (and Drop of Honey could work well to remove what creatures they do get into play). I also like the option of another Portent in the form of Natural Selection. I don't get to playtest much, and I know this is a particularly unfun deck to playtest against with all the shuffling going on, but any help would be tremendously appreciated!
Original Post:
I've been brainstorming this deck ever since my Modern Top Control deck showed promising results against Tier 1 Vintage. Here is my preliminary list:
4 Field of Dreams
4 Codex Shredder
4 Cathartic Adept
4 Psychic Surgery
4 Extirpate
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cosi's Trickster
1 Elixir of Immortality
4 Polluted Delta
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Darkslick Shores
2 Island
1 Swamp
I suppose the plan is obvious - Control the opponents' draws. There are various ways of doing this:
- Lantern of Insight + Codex Shredder/Cathartic Adept or Extract/Surgical Extraction/Extirpate/Ghost Quarter (shuffle away a card you don't want them to draw when it is on top)
- Field of Dreams + Codex Shredder/Cathartic Adept or Extract/Surgical Extraction/Extirpate/Ghost Quarter/Lantern of Insight (shuffle away a card you don't want them to draw when it is on top)
- Psychic Surgery + Extract/Extirpate/Surgical Extraction/Ghost Quarter/Lantern of Insight
The optimum plan is often to go after the manabase and extract it, but the deck can be played according to the situation. Gitaxian Probe allows us to see what they do have, and thus, what they want/need to draw. Cosi's Trickster becomes quite the threat with 20 shuffle effects (not including any shuffle effects the opponent is already running).
I have thought of some alternate cards as well.
- Daze - Especially if we go after their lands.
- Archive Trap - Makes it extremely easy to neuter a large number of lands/threats quickly.
- Chain of Vapor - Bounces Leylines/threats, and if the opponent does get silly and sac lands to copy it, that gives more land targets for Extirpates/Surgical Extractions. Chances are they will have a bit more trouble replaying their permanents than we will.
EDIT - I realized after a bit of testing that Gitaxian Probe could probably be replaced with Chain of Vapor to a good amount of benefit. Extirpate and Surgical Extraction let you see their hand anyways, and those combined with Extract can let you deduce their hand if you write out the opp's decklist and have a decent knowledge of the meta/deck archetypes.
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
Don't forget that in legacy there are cards like brainstorm, ponder, preordain, semsei top. They can change the order of the top cards. There are wastelands too. I had the same idea some months ago, I would like to work on it!
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
4 Lantern of Insight
4 Field of Dreams
Mill and Combo (10)
4 Codex Shredder
4 Ghoulcaller's Bell
1 Grindstone
1 Painter's Servant
Extraction Engine (16)
4 Psychic Surgery
4 Extract
4 Extirpate
4 Surgical Extraction
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Artificer's Intuition
2 Ancestral Vision
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Sensei's Divining Top
Fast Mana (5)
3 Mox Opal
2 Mox Diamond
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Academy Ruins
3 Seat of the Synod
3 Vault of Whispers
1 Island
1 Swamp
Same basic idea, but centered more around artifacts. Artificer's Intuition lets you cycle extra artifact lands or unneeded trinkets for the ones you do need. Nothing in the deck is over CMC 2 or needs more than 3 mana to activate, so you can easily run off the two basics and a mana bauble to play around Blood Moon orWasteland, or just get extra value from the artifact lands. You also have the Painter/Grindstone combo to finish the game instantly, should you draw into it (and the Grindstone can actually be tutored via the Intuition).
The numbers are rough and probably need to be adjusted, especially given the Intuition tutor capability.
-4 extirpate, -4psychic s., -4 extract, -1 surgical, +4 lotus p, +2-3 sensei top, + 3/2 enlighted tutor, +4 transmute artifact.
If you wanna use ghostquarter just replace it with wasteland.
-4 ghostquarter, +2/3ancient tomb +4 glimmervoid. +1 seat synod, -1/2 vault of w. At the least we need 15/16 lands +4 lotus p, + mox opal and ancient tomb.
-2 mox diamond (not synergic), -2/1 mox opal +4 brainstorm.
-2 arteficier int. +4 thoughtseize
-2 ghoulcall., +2 pyxis.
-1 field dreams
4 Lantern of Insight
3 Field of Dreams
Mill and Combo (10)
4 Codex Shredder
2 Ghoulcaller's Bell
2 Pyxis of Pandemonium
1 Grindstone
1 Painter's Servant
Extraction "Engine" (3)
4 Thoughtseize
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Ancestral Vision
1 Elixir of Immortality
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Enlightened Tutor
4 Transmute Artifact
4 Brainstorm
Fast Mana (5)
4 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Opal
4 Glimmervoid
3 Ancient Tomb
1 Academy Ruins
4 Seat of the Synod
2 Vault of Whispers
1 Island
1 Swamp
Without the Artificer's Intuition, there's much less reason to run the artifact lands, except for turning on Mox Opal, which is also less relevant. Probably just go back to fetches/duals.
I'm also not sure what this would do with 21 mana sources including sol lands. Literally the most expensive line of play this deck ever wants to see is double Transmute Artifact into Painter's Servant and Grindstone, then activating the stone all in one turn. That's at most 8 mana, and if their hand is under control then spreading over two turns is enough.
An explosive, empty handed, turn 1 is nice, but that's a lot of slots and self-damage that you probably can't afford. With 85% of the action being only 1 drops, a 2 land hand will still empty out on turn 3 or 4 with no other land draws. With a single fast mana plus 2 lands in the opening 7 this deck empties hand on turn 2. If it hits several pieces of fast mana, it could have no hand on turn 1, and nothing much to do with all the mana it has. Most Legacy decks run 20 or less lands for a reason, and that's even running 2 and 3 drops, not the collection of almost exclusively 1 drops that this deck is.
This also removes almost the entire extraction engine to buff up tutoring and digging. What, exactly is it tutoring/transmuting for? Draw control trinkets are nice, but it needs to have some other game plan at some point, or tempo/aggro decks are going to run it over. The best line now seems to be to try for the Grindstone/Painter combo, but honestly, I'd put that in mostly as a compact 2 card way to close out a game quickly once you'd achieved a mana/hand lock. Nothing else in this deck is going to beat a single resolved Nimble Mongoose or Delver of Secrets or any deck at all with Bridge from Below or a Reanimate type card anywhere in the 75.
thnkr's original build, which my deck was just a streamlined form of, is primarily aimed at attacking manabases, rather than attacking action which is the typical plan for the Modern incarnation of Top Control. In Legacy this works better because so many decks are running at most 1 or 2 basics and often less than 20 total lands. Even control decks only tend to run 22-23. If they t1 crack a fetch into a dual and you follow up by Quarter/Wasteland the dual and then Extirpate/Surgically Extract both the fetch and the dual you could remove as much as a half of their total mana base. Thoughtseize doesn't put lands in bin to attack, and with only 3 Surgical Extraction, you couldn't be sure of having them anyhow.
As to why choose Ghost Quarter over Wasteland? It's not strictly budget. First, unlike Wasteland, it can make them shuffle, which plays into Psychic Surgery (and Cosi's Trickster if you're running that). Again, most decks only run at most 1 or 2 basics, and if you Ghost Quarter their basic... they have no others to fetch, and it turns into a Wasteland that actually can hit basics. At worst, they do have another basic, but you've kept them off colors, which for many of the 3 and 4 color decks can be vital. Of course, there are decks that have enough basics (Maverick, Miracles, D&T all run a decent proportion of basics), but even then you can sometimes keep them off easy access to colors. If you really wanted to go all in on this plan Dust Bowl, Smallpox and Sinkhole would be the first set of cards I was looking at adding, with maybe Spreading Algae, depending on how heavy dual swamps were in my meta. Unlike the D&T style of mana denial, Rishadan Port isn't very good for this deck, as we'd really like the non-basics in bin where we can extract them and all other copies of them forever, nor can we play our low cost spells via an Aether Vial.
Also, in retrospect, the Cosi's Trickster actually seems more relevant than I first thought. The combination with the "make them shuffle" plan is pretty good, but being able to handle any 1 or 2 drops they can land is important, and a Trickster should grow bigger than most creatures and be able to potentially race the few it can't block. At the very least, it's a chump blocker for something bigger. Bitterblossom could potentially fill the same role, and also blocks some relevant things that Trickster doesn't, namely Griselbrand and Insectile Aberration, and against other decks it's a fairly reasonable clock. This leads into another idea, though...
One thing Fuga suggests that I do like is having at least some form of targeted discard to get cards to where you can use Extirpate and Surgical on them. Thoughtseize is good, but if you were to go with the Bitterblossom approach, Cabal Therapy could be even better, as you can flash it back for the "free" cost of a 1 life token. Like thoughtseize it can't strip lands, but it does hit other non-land mana sources like baubles and rituals, and with all the extracts and probes and seeing draws, you're almost never going to whiff. That makes it 2 cards discarded for 1 mana and the 1 life for a Bitterblossom token, which is a pretty sweet deal. Even without the Bitterblossom, it's still not horrible, and it can just hang out in the graveyard until you did eventually find a Bitterblossom to flash it back.
Maybe something like this:
4 Lantern of Insight
3 Field of Dreams
Mill and Combo (8)
4 Codex Shredder
4 Ghoulcaller's Bell
Extraction Engine (18)
4 Psychic Surgery
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Extract
4 Extirpate
4 Surgical Extraction
2 Bitterblossom
2 Cosi's Trickster
Utility (6)
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Artificer's Intuition
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Sensei's Divining Top
Fast Mana (4)
2 Mox Opal
2 Lotus Petal
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Academy Ruins
3 Seat of the Synod
3 Vault of Whispers
1 Island
1 Swamp
You give up the actual card advantage of the Ancestral Vision for the virtual card advantage and blockers/clock in the Bitterblossom/Cabal Therapy package. Therapies provide more looks at the hand, making me comfortable with shaving a Field of Dreams and also remove things from hand offsetting losing a few Extracts, which were already the worst part of the Extraction Engine section. Finally, you lose the Grindstone/Painter combo to return 2 Cosi's Tricksters as part of the chump block or clock brigade. And to squeeze it all in, a few more minor adjustments to the fast mana package.
The deck is still very mana efficient (six total CMC 2 cards, one 2 activation), but it might need one or two more mana sources just to prevent mulligans, which I'd probably remove the remaining Extracts or shave another Field of Dreams for. As is, it has a 92% chance to see 1 mana in the opening 7, 65% to see 2 in the opening and 72% to see 2 by turn 2. Going up to 19 mana sources would change that to 94% for at least 1 in the opening hand, 72% for at least 2 in opening and 80% to see 2 by turn 2.
4 Lantern of Insight
2 Field of Dreams
Mill and Combo (10)
4 Codex Shredder
2 Ghoulcaller's Bell
2 Pyxis of Pandemonium
1 Grindstone
1 Painter's Servant
Extraction "Engine" (6)
4 Thoughtseize
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Pithing Needle
2 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Enlightened Tutor
4 Transmute Artifact
4 Brainstorm
Fast Mana (6)
4 Lotus Petal
2 Mox Opal
4 Glimmervoid
2 Ancient Tomb
1 Academy Ruins
4 Seat of the Synod
2 Underground sea
1 Island
1 Swamp
That looks a lot more cohesive. Transmute or Tutor into Bridge gives you play against decks which can deploy a threat through hand control.
Still feels very mana heavy. 21 mana sources in a deck that tops out at two CMC 3 artifacts and one 3 activation cost. And no real draw engine besides a set of Brainstorms, so you're not going to frequently need to play more than 1 or 2 spells in a turn past the first. By comparison, Delver decks mostly run 15-19 mana sources, depending on version. Even Miracles, which is a slow control deck that's hard casting cmc 4 planeswalkers like JtMS is only using 22 mana sources. Reanimator, which runs a very similar mana curve to this deck, is 14-15 lands and 4 Lotus Petals. I think you could safely drop the 2 Ancient Tomb and up your count on Surgical Extraction. You really need all the Surgicals, because if your win conditions are only either slow mill via Shredders or combo mill via Grindstone, you have to deal with all the decks that have Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or other "shuffles back into deck" effects.
Ponders give much needed shuffling. You should swap Glimmers for fetches as well. I'd honestly take an Omnishow deck or monoU painter deck and swap 1-for-1 until you get something that resembles what you want
Look, Fetch, Draw, Look
Draw
Fetch
Look
Lantern Control
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Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
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Either way; *again*; you're in blue. Multiples of those cards are *useless.* They grant card disadvantage for information. What you want is to be card neutral most of the time and protect your piece when it comes down. Having 3-5 of those Lanterns/Fields will be enough when you have all of your searching components. Having 6 means you'll often have 2+ in a starting hand; meaning you have to brainstorm them away to get useful things into your hand.
What's worst is that your deck is prone to brain-locks because you'll brainstorm without being able to shuffle your deck.
In other words:
Do what I said. Add fetches and Ponders to shuffle your library; drop the over-redundancy to make a more potent/reliable deck.
Look, Fetch, Draw, Look
Draw
Fetch
Look
About the lanter ecc. maybe you're right. 4x lanter and 1x field. But what are you goin to put in 1x empty slot? Tormord's crypt/relic of progenitus?
We need glimmervoid for colored mana.
Same for artifact lands to use mox opal fisrt turn.
You should try to start with thoughtseize+surgical. Awesome.
@DaR: emrakul is not a problem with pyxis. Just exile if from the top as in modern or surgical it or use tormord's crypt ability in response of trigger. That's all
Who started to test the deck anyway?
It's not a problem if you have a Crypt on the table or the Emrakul is revealed on top and you have Pyxis on the table and it's untapped. If you're trying to combo out with the Painter/Grindstone combo, Pyxis doesn't help, and you've just bricked yourself for at least a turn, if not reset their whole deck so that they now have access to all their answers you previously milled away. And no matter how good your hand control setup is, the threat density in most legacy decks will not let you get away with the long slow mill plan. You either need to be permanently removing things from their deck like thnkr's version of the deck, or you need to reliably hit the painter combo with consistent answers for reshuffling cards.
Don't get me wrong. I love this deck in Modern, and think there could be a legitimate Legacy deck using some of the same ideas. But Legacy has a lot more answers and lines of play than Modern does, and a lot more decks have things like Emrakul, Progenitus, Blightsteel. That's because several of the best archetypes are about cheating or ramping those into play like Show&Tell, Reanimator, Tinfins, MUD, and so on. Likewise, there are a lot more decks that play almost completely out of the graveyard, like Dredge and Oops All Spells, and they happily thank you for putting a few more of their cards in the graveyard to help them go off faster. Taking the Modern game plan and simply adding Legacy dig and tutors in place of Modern ones is not going to work very well. You need to adapt to the things that broken Legacy decks can do. That's why having at least a full set of Surgicals would be my recommendation.
That's also why I think thnkr's basic approach is probably the stronger one to take in Legacy than the classic Modern Top Control plan. Attacking somewhat fragile Legacy manabases gives you time, and having 8 multi-card extractions and another 4-6 that hit single cards, but repeatedly, lets you close out their gameplan with that time.
The deck is only prone to brain-locks if you insist on running Brainstorm. I already added fetches (not in real life - I save for retirement responsibly).
I do think that Tricksters might do better in the sideboard, and cutting Probes altogether might be better, in order to make room for removal. You remove one creature in play, then remove all copies of them from the game. If you read the article, it does point out that quite a few Legacy decks that run creature threats run around four copies of the same three creatures or so. That alone makes it a bit easier to neuter quite a few threats out of the average Legacy deck.
As far as Blightsteel, Progenitus, and Emrakul, if you look at my core concept and original decklist, you'll notice that there are eight instant speed exile effects that you can play with those triggers on the stack. That's not including the four Extract that let you go through their library and exile them pre-emptively. I suppose ditching that conceptual direction of the deck could be a possibility, but I would disagree that it would be as effective. I feel like the amount of "mill" that is already in the deck, thanks to eight "Shredders" and eight "Extirpates", might be underestimated. This is negating the "mill" that Psychic Surgery does with twenty shuffle effects and the additional cards from Ghost Quarters and Extracts. Yes, it's slower than many other mill decks, but that's because this doesn't go balls-to-the-wall mill. It's a very controllish mill. Sometimes you don't *want* to Extirpate yet, because they have a dead card on top, and you want them to draw that dead card.
On that note, those exile effects are important parts to the core concept. This version does not play like the Modern Top Control in that sense. Part of the reason I went this route instead of my RG Modern route is that I have recently been going through and paying close attention to what decks have been placing well at the SCG Legacy Opens. DaR, you mention Dredge, Reanimator, and Oops - Those decks had a few problems when people were sideboarding in Surgical Extractions. This deck runs them main, plus Extirpates, and then Extract on top of that. Oops and Dredge each usually have one enabler that they Dread Return that a single Extract effect will shut down, and Reanimator has trouble when you exile their target with their reanimating spell on the stack.
Combo decks have some difficulty when you exile a key piece to the combo - For example, against Sneak & Show, if you start exiling either Sneak or Show, you've essentially cut off a large portion of the deck. If you exile both (which isn't that difficult with 8 that exile all of a card and 4 that exile single cards - and you control a large portion of what they draw due to the consistency of having a topdeck-control combo), then it neuters the deck entirely.
I think we are in agreement with the proper direction for this deck, DaR. I mentioned dropping Gitaxian Probe and moving Trickster to the sideboard in order to shore up some of the more aggro matches, packing in some removal in their places maybe. I want to see what sort of creature-based decks this would have the most trouble with and use removal that is specific to those first, and then tweak the sideboard from there. What would you suggest?
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan
Also if you want to go full throttle into land denial, look up encroach. It's almost completely unknown, but i feel could possibly work here. Spreading algae can do some serious damage if you run urborg too. Lotus petal/ancient tomb bloodmoon is a very tempting line of play as well, as it also turns our painlands "off".
I would run 4 field of dreams and 4 forces with more blue in general, spell pierces get better and could become hard counters if we deny lands hard enough. Force is so you dont auto lose to ant/tes/belcher/sneak, which can all win with their opening hand.
As fast mana i would run 4 petals, 4 mox diamonds, 4 ancient tombs minimum. This deck needs the lock Asap to not get run over.
Also, since this version doesnt use bridge as much as the modern version does, we could use terminus, which gets rid of everything pesky we could encounter. With terminus comes brainstorm or jace or both. Speaking of jace and all this fast mana, I think and incredible line of play would be following up the lock with a t2 jace, solidifying your position and setting up for the win.
These are just some of the things I've thought of admiring top control and playing countertop miracles in legacy. The engine is different, the goal is the same. Deny as many lines of play possible until you win.
I feel like rest in peace or planar void belongs here 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)
The win con of the deck is after you have 3 or so of these in play your opponent is locked out of the game. You force them to never be able to draw a threat.
This means with ancient tomb and the like, you can literally lock them turn 1. Your plays after playing your fateseal combo is just dealing with threats from their hand. Surgical extraction is a must, as is extirpate. Most people only run 14 or so cards that can actively win the game in their decks. The rest are cards that generally protect those cards, kill your stuff, etc. If you remove their 12-14 threats from their deck they physically cannot win anymore.
You'd be surprised by the fact that casting surgical extraction + extirpate even just 3 times is enough to neuter their chances of top decking a threat down to almost 0. Combined with the fateseal lock and chances are by turn 2-3 they physically wont be able to do anything.
The fateseal combo has a big weakness, and that is dredge. That's why the surgical extraction x4 is so nasty against dredge. Being able to snipe their first couple of dredge pieces they drop before they get a dredge off is generally enough to slow them down enough for you to start locking them.
Dredge is super hard to navigate and our hardest matchup, but with surgical extraction and leylines in the SB it can be done.
4 Lantern of Insight
4 Codex Shredder
4 Cathartic Adept
4 Psychic Surgery
4 Extract
4 Extirpate
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Portent
4 Maze of Ith
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Wasteland
Some had suggested using Ponder, but I realized that Portent is pretty much strictly better in this deck, as it assists in controlling their draws, and allows us to shuffle their deck if need be (for Psychic Surgery).
Sideboard considerations that I have are as follows:
Archive Trap, Chain of Vapor - I'd mentioned these in the original post.
Cosi's Trickster - I'd moved this to a possible sideboard card rather than main deck. I found that Maze of Ith was better at holding down creatures than Trickster, but against creatureless decks Trickster could come in. Especially after they've sided out much of their creature hate.
Inquisition of Kozilek/Duress - For combo-heavy environments.
I think that in an established (higher tier) meta, going after the manabase is still the strongest gameplan. After a single fetch, and one Ghost Quarter or Wasteland from us, that's usually a good 1/3 of their manabase most of the time. I haven't actually tested with the Wastelands yet, so I'm not sure if that addition can support the mana costs of all the cards. The reason I think that it's worth testing is that it will typically set them much farther back than us anyways, and this method should absolutely destroy the typical manabase of a developed meta.
Lantern Control
(with videos)
Uc Tron
Netdecking explained
Netdecking explained, Part 2
On speculators and counterfeits
On Interaction
Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
Record number of exclamation points on SCG homepage: 71 (6 January, 2018)
"I don't want to believe, I want to know."
-Carl Sagan