So, let me preface this by saying I've mainly been playing commander these days. I've shoved Sphinx's Tutelage into a couple decks and it has become something my friends don't want me to play any more. So I figure I could build a deck around it in modern and subject other people to it. I came up with this list:
*Sideboards are a work in progress but I can throw my current card choices in if there is interest.*
The way the deck wins is through a two-pronged mill strategy. The Howling Mine affects force the opponent to take cards out of their library while your draws also pull cards out of their library through Sphinx's Tutelage and Jace's Erasure. It doesn't take long for these cards to get out of hand. A Toot with a Mine is eating 6 cards from their deck a turn without the additional trigger. So any additional cards make things significantly faster.
So once you get some mill stuff in play, you turn to control. It takes time for the deck to kill, so you are just buying turns until your opponent decks out. White is stronger when it comes to hard control and removing threats, but mono blue plays at instant speed more. I'm pretty sure Engulf the Shore is the only way to make it playable but as long as you're hitting land drops, you should be able to keep yourself from dying. Also, the added benefit of an easier manabase that comes with a mono-colored deck.
I'd like to get some feedback from others on this. I've stewed over it for a few days and done a lot of goldfishing and tested a bit against other players. It seems solid but I'm not sure how best to go about the control side of things. The deck plays a lot like a tap out control deck in the early stages, then transitions to draw-go control. So any advice from control players would be appreciated. Like, how strong do you think Cryptic Command is currently and would it be a good fit here?
Anyways, I enjoy the spice levels of the cards for the deck. Everything seems to have awesome synergy and I feel like it should work. It definitely needs some tuning but I think there is some promise here. Tell me what you think!
I ran the deck at a local tournament this Saturday. Went 1-3 with it but a lot of it was due to inexperience with the deck and suboptimal post-board plans since I was trying out stuff. Here's a link to my last round with the deck:
I played against 8 Rack (lost 0-2 to Mutavault beats), 8 Whack Goblins (lost 0-2 to not keeping removal), UW Control (won 2-1), and Grixis Control (lost 1-2 to not drawing Removal/misplays). The core of the deck was brutal when it was in play, which happened every game. I mainly lost to not having the right answers at the right time or just in general. Post-board felt rough because I didn't feel like I had relevant cards. I think having an extra Wrath of God effect or two would be good and I really want to put in 4 Leyline of Sanctity. Leyline would have been insane in several of my match ups. I'm not sure if Jace Beleren is necessary but he did soak up damage for a couple turns for me and that is what the deck wants. I'll keep him in for now, but it is definitely a flex spot. Cryptic Command was decent but it was never X+Draw for me. Which is good I assume, it was putting in a lot of work buying me turns. I had an incident where I couldn't cast Cryptic which could have cost me the game. So I think no more than 3 colorless sources should be in the deck.
I think for the next tournament, I'll be playing something like this*:
Celestial Colonnade seems rather strange here as well since you aren't likely to win by damage which makes it just a slow EtB tapped land.
Adding more fetches seems like a better idea.
The removal spells allow me to permanently remove creatures, rather than just buying one combat phase. Also, there are decks that use creatures to win without attacking. I guess in my mind, fog effects have bigger loop holes than hard removal spells.
I haven't had any games where I've come close to milling myself out. The Erasures and Tutelages break the symmetric "mill" of the Mines and I end most games with over 30 cards left in my deck. I don't think Elixir of Immortality is necessary here to off set this, though it is definitely a good card to keep in mind as I keep testing.
Fraying Sanity is definitely a solid card. For some reason I thought it triggered at the end of the enchanted player's turns, so I skipped over it because most of the milling my deck does happens on my turn (therefore a nombo). It could probably going in over the Erasures but then I think I may have too many 3-drops in the deck. I'll pick up some copies and give it a try. It should definitely be somewhere in the deck.
Celestial Colonnade is a bit weird for mill. I put it in because it is a UW dual and works well with Supreme Verdict. It gives the deck at least one "body" to utilize in an otherwise creatureless deck. For example, in the games I played, it helped slow down Mutavault beats when I couldn't deal with them otherwise. The deck doesn't have any real turn 1 plays and after hitting 4 lands, I'm not dying to have new mana sources every turn. So 2 ETB tapped lands isn't terribly strenuous on the deck. I don't think shoving more fetches in helps the deck directly, outside of marginal thinning, and having the manland ability has to be better than running stuff like Glacial Fortress/Temple of Enlightenment/Irrigated Farmland in its place.
Thank you for your suggestions! I'll see what I can do about implementing some changes and see how things look from there.
Big fan of Turbo fog here, so hopefully I can help. So what you have here is a deck type I call Turbo Wrath. A varient of turbo fog where instead if fogs you look to clear the board every few turns instead of just preventing the damage. I like it, but feel a few cards are out if place. First off I know you like Erasure, but lets be honest here. It's not pulling it's weight. Ive tried it and its just not good enough. Rather than playing that and getting a few more unimportant mills throughout the game go with Dawn Charm. This is the second best fog ever made. First being Constant Mist, but thats neither here nor there. What Dawn Charm offers you is an out to burn spells, An out to discard, and a great fog effect. Buying you time to draw more cards and find those wrath or bounce effects. MUST INCLUDE.
So make that swap straight up. Next is you dont really need 4 sphinxs toot. Run 3 and put in another wrath effect. The sphinxs is just to speed up the clock.
Depending on your meta you may nees some way to clear something out of the board. Either surgical extraction, or relic of hydra god. Mainly because you want to be able to win through an ulma or emmy getting milled or hand sized out. I like relic in a deck with tutelage. That single extra draw has won me a few games where they nearly have lethal, but drawing a card and milling them tge extra 4 cards was the deciding factor.
White leyline is an absolute must in the board if not a few main. You have to have a way to fight against seize, iok, etc. Otherwise they just strip you of your turbo cards and you wrath a few times before they get you. No good. Also giving burn losts of draws without a good answer is probably not a winning idea.
Nythos, collins, spreading seas are all pretty useless.
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1 Sun Titan
1 Kefnet the Mindful
Mill: 8
4 Jace's Erasure
4 Sphinx's Tutelage
Draw: 10
4 Dictate of Kruphix
4 Howling Mine
2 Jace Beleren
4 Path to Exile
2 Cyclonic Rift
4 Remand
4 Supreme Verdict
2 Sphinx's Revelation
Lands: 24
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Reliquary Tower
5 Island
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
4 Hallowed Fountain
3 Plains
2 Seachrome Coast
2 Celestial Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
The white splash gives the deck some stronger removal options but I have a mono-blue variant as well. Which looks like this:
4 Jace's Erasure
4 Sphinx's Tutelage
Draw: 12
4 Howling Mine
4 Dictate of Kruphix
2 Jace Beleren
2 Teferi's Puzzle Box
4 Unsummon
2 Cyclonic Rift
4 Remand
4 Engulf the Shore
2 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
2 Reliquary Tower
21 Island
*Sideboards are a work in progress but I can throw my current card choices in if there is interest.*
The way the deck wins is through a two-pronged mill strategy. The Howling Mine affects force the opponent to take cards out of their library while your draws also pull cards out of their library through Sphinx's Tutelage and Jace's Erasure. It doesn't take long for these cards to get out of hand. A Toot with a Mine is eating 6 cards from their deck a turn without the additional trigger. So any additional cards make things significantly faster.
So once you get some mill stuff in play, you turn to control. It takes time for the deck to kill, so you are just buying turns until your opponent decks out. White is stronger when it comes to hard control and removing threats, but mono blue plays at instant speed more. I'm pretty sure Engulf the Shore is the only way to make it playable but as long as you're hitting land drops, you should be able to keep yourself from dying. Also, the added benefit of an easier manabase that comes with a mono-colored deck.
I'd like to get some feedback from others on this. I've stewed over it for a few days and done a lot of goldfishing and tested a bit against other players. It seems solid but I'm not sure how best to go about the control side of things. The deck plays a lot like a tap out control deck in the early stages, then transitions to draw-go control. So any advice from control players would be appreciated. Like, how strong do you think Cryptic Command is currently and would it be a good fit here?
Anyways, I enjoy the spice levels of the cards for the deck. Everything seems to have awesome synergy and I feel like it should work. It definitely needs some tuning but I think there is some promise here. Tell me what you think!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/214015694?t=03h50m41s
And the full 75 that I ran:
4 Jace's Erasure
4 Sphinx's Tutelage
Draw: 10
4 Howling Mine
4 Dictate of Kruphix
2 Jace Beleren
Control: 18
4 Path to Exile
2 Cyclonic Rift
4 Remand
4 Supreme Verdict
2 Cryptic Command
2 Sphinx's Revelation
2 Reliquary Tower
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4 Hallowed Fountain
2 Celestial Collonade
2 Seachrome Coast
4 Flooded Strand
5 Island
3 Plains
2 Blessed Alliance
4 Spreading Seas
4 Negate
2 Rest in Peace
3 Timely Reinforcements
I played against 8 Rack (lost 0-2 to Mutavault beats), 8 Whack Goblins (lost 0-2 to not keeping removal), UW Control (won 2-1), and Grixis Control (lost 1-2 to not drawing Removal/misplays). The core of the deck was brutal when it was in play, which happened every game. I mainly lost to not having the right answers at the right time or just in general. Post-board felt rough because I didn't feel like I had relevant cards. I think having an extra Wrath of God effect or two would be good and I really want to put in 4 Leyline of Sanctity. Leyline would have been insane in several of my match ups. I'm not sure if Jace Beleren is necessary but he did soak up damage for a couple turns for me and that is what the deck wants. I'll keep him in for now, but it is definitely a flex spot. Cryptic Command was decent but it was never X+Draw for me. Which is good I assume, it was putting in a lot of work buying me turns. I had an incident where I couldn't cast Cryptic which could have cost me the game. So I think no more than 3 colorless sources should be in the deck.
I think for the next tournament, I'll be playing something like this*:
4 Jace's Erasure
4 Sphinx's Tutelage
Draw: 11
4 Howling Mine
4 Dictate of Kruphix
2 Jace Beleren
1 Consecrated Sphinx
Control: 17
4 Path to Exile
2 Cyclonic Rift
4 Remand
4 Supreme Verdict
2 Cryptic Command
1 Sphinx's Revelation
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Glacial Fortress
4 Hallowed Fountain
2 Celestial Collonade
2 Seachrome Coast
4 Flooded Strand
5 Island
3 Plains
2 Dispel
1 Baneslayer Angel
1 Day of Judgment
2 Surgical Extraction
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Rest in Peace
3 Timely Reinforcements
*full 75 subject to change without notice.
Potential cards:
Treasure Map
Nimble Obstructionist
Oona's Grace
Pulse of the Grid
Why use PtE, Cyclonic Rift and S.Verdict over fog effects ?
I'd at least replace PtE and Cyclonic Rift with Ethereal Haze and Angelsong (cycles), other options are Holy Day, Dawn Charm, Riot Control and Pollen Lullaby.
Also Jace's Erasure is super slow and can probably be better as Mesmeric Orb (or even Hedron Crab/Altar of the Brood)
Both of these 1-mana alternative options require more fetches to be effective though.
Another way to speed up the milling can be Fraying Sanity.
Celestial Colonnade seems rather strange here as well since you aren't likely to win by damage which makes it just a slow EtB tapped land.
Adding more fetches seems like a better idea.
Elixir of Immortality seems pretty necessary for a Howling Mine deck to avoild decking yourself and recycle spells.
I agree that Jace's Erasure is fairly slow but it functions as redundancy for Sphinx's Tutelage and comes in as a two drop to compliment Dictate of Kruphix.
I haven't had any games where I've come close to milling myself out. The Erasures and Tutelages break the symmetric "mill" of the Mines and I end most games with over 30 cards left in my deck. I don't think Elixir of Immortality is necessary here to off set this, though it is definitely a good card to keep in mind as I keep testing.
Fraying Sanity is definitely a solid card. For some reason I thought it triggered at the end of the enchanted player's turns, so I skipped over it because most of the milling my deck does happens on my turn (therefore a nombo). It could probably going in over the Erasures but then I think I may have too many 3-drops in the deck. I'll pick up some copies and give it a try. It should definitely be somewhere in the deck.
Celestial Colonnade is a bit weird for mill. I put it in because it is a UW dual and works well with Supreme Verdict. It gives the deck at least one "body" to utilize in an otherwise creatureless deck. For example, in the games I played, it helped slow down Mutavault beats when I couldn't deal with them otherwise. The deck doesn't have any real turn 1 plays and after hitting 4 lands, I'm not dying to have new mana sources every turn. So 2 ETB tapped lands isn't terribly strenuous on the deck. I don't think shoving more fetches in helps the deck directly, outside of marginal thinning, and having the manland ability has to be better than running stuff like Glacial Fortress/Temple of Enlightenment/Irrigated Farmland in its place.
Thank you for your suggestions! I'll see what I can do about implementing some changes and see how things look from there.
So make that swap straight up. Next is you dont really need 4 sphinxs toot. Run 3 and put in another wrath effect. The sphinxs is just to speed up the clock.
Depending on your meta you may nees some way to clear something out of the board. Either surgical extraction, or relic of hydra god. Mainly because you want to be able to win through an ulma or emmy getting milled or hand sized out. I like relic in a deck with tutelage. That single extra draw has won me a few games where they nearly have lethal, but drawing a card and milling them tge extra 4 cards was the deciding factor.
White leyline is an absolute must in the board if not a few main. You have to have a way to fight against seize, iok, etc. Otherwise they just strip you of your turbo cards and you wrath a few times before they get you. No good. Also giving burn losts of draws without a good answer is probably not a winning idea.
Nythos, collins, spreading seas are all pretty useless.