This is a budget deck, meant for players to find a cheap option into storm combo. Storm is an extremely strong mechanic, allowing us to win in one explosive turn. It is a fun and exciting playstyle, yet extremely complicated. Given this is a branch off of the original Sac Land Tendrils created by Jin15. I would recommend you first read through that primer.
Introduction
This version of Sac Land Tendrils uses one very powerful card Doomsday. This namesake card does everything and more. It allows us to set up any 5 cards which will help us answer ProblemCards and get our lethal storm count for Tendril’s Of Agony.
I highly recommend reading the following article written by emidln, one of the creators of DDFT and amongst the biggest contributors and players of the deck.
Doomsday / Burning Wish This is our engine. Almost every game the idea is to find and resolve doomsday and win. This can also be done by Burning wishing for our Sideboarded doomsday. Or finding through our cantrips, ponder, Night’s Whisper. Having 7x Business Spells, + cantrips should help eliminate the chances of not finding a doomsday within the first 2-4 turns.
Meditate ,Infernal Contract These are used to draw our pile. Both are included as color requirements can be tricky and sometimes it is easier to play one over the other. Also, life can be an issue for Infernal Contract. If you are having a hard time finding doomsday. Both of these can be used in early turns to find it. Careful again with Infernal Contract due to the life loss.
Empty the Warrens This is in here for specific cases. Occasionally you have those games that are just explosive. A hand of Gemstone Mine, Burning Wish,Dark Ritual, Lotus Petal,Right of Flame, Rite of Flame. Or some turn 2/3 variation can provide 10+ goblin tokens. Oftentimes enough to win. There are games where your opponent may have 40 life and getting 20 storm for tendrils isn't feasible. However, you might be able to generate 10-12 storm. By putting a Doomsday as the last card in your pile, you can combo out, get a ton of Empty the Warrens tokens (10,15,20+), and then use Doomsday so that you don't deck yourself and get 5 more turns to swing with your horde of goblins.
The landbase is another name-sake. These Sac lands allow for a very explosive turn 3. As well as providing multiple colors, allowing this deck to be run in 2+colors without the expense of fetchlands and duals. These lands and the exclusion of Lion’s Eye Diamond Are what really slim the price for the deck.
Tendril’s of Agony There is one main deck and 1 sideboarded. This allows for multiple piles. As without Lion’s Eye Diamond, getting enough Red and Black mana post Doomsday in order to use burning wish solely to find Tendrils of Agony proved to be difficult and slowed the deck down. If you do have the mana you can go this route for +1 storm count.
Duress, Inquisition of kozilek These are our protection. We have 6 spells main decked to get rid of counters and annoying creatures to protect our combo and 1 in the sideboard as a wish target. Duress and Gitaxian Probe can either make a safe path for our combo or give us some insight so we know what we have to play around or through.
Manamorphose Originally I wanted to cut this card. However when goldfishing I found it extremely useful for both the use of its draw ability , to start digging into our Doomsday pile as well as its ability to filter our colors to cast Infernal Contract,Meditate. It can also be used in a pile as a “free” cantrip if the life loss from Gitaxian Probe would be significant.
Cards that were excluded:
Silence,Orim’s chant These are not on color. Between our lands, rituals, and lack of color filtering, these are nearly uncastable. Making Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek far stronger, or more often useable and useful.
Chromatic Star, Chromatic Sphere. By mainstreaming the use of Black and red, having fewer color requirements (not using Ideas Unbound and other cantrips as seen in the Sac Land tendrils list) As well as excluding the use of Silence and the need for white. The color filtering is not needed. This deck is also not based on chaining draws/cantrips and the draw effects or replacement effects are no longer as useful.
Ideas Unbound This is often used in the DDFT builds as the main cantrip. However this deck is terribly inefficient in creating U, let alone UU. And having Infernal Contract,Meditate and Ideas unbound was too redundant and wasted slots.
Playing the Deck:
So you decide to pick this up and goldfish. Open your hand, find some cantrips, rituals and doomsday.
But that’s easy. What if the situation isn’t as easy. What if we have a little more mana, but we know they have a stifle in hand that we need to get rid of. Or they have a gaddock teeg in play we need to bounce.
This can all be done with doomsday. The thing is you might need more mana. If we have 2UBBPost doomsday we can now afford to put a duress in our pile instead of lotus petal.
Or what if we need to generate a storm count of 15? This is costly, but for 3UBBpost doomsday we can do this.
Requirements: 3UUB+ Cantrip mana post doomsday. 2 cantrips in hand. minimum of 4 life.
The first of which adds + 8 to your storm count. And the second adding 9. Not counting any amount of Duress/Rituals and the original Doomsday.
Storm can be further increased by 1 for an additional 1R mana, or by 2 by using burning wish to fetch both the second Doomsday, and Tendrils of Agony. Gaining you 11 storm count, not counting the rituals/cantrips/protection and Doomsday played to get to this point. So if we had played a duress, Dark Ritual, Doomsday, Cantrip, + our double doomsday pile using burning wish
Pile:Top
5UUBRR Required. Using manamorphose as our second cantrip. (this is perfect for these situations, as it costs 0 mana to draw a card) With this chain we will have generated 15 storm, hitting for a whopping 30 life loss.
This seems like a lot of mana. But when you think about it. On turn 3, We can get +5 mana from lands. +BBFor Each Dark Ritual, + Bfor cabal ritual. Or if lucky we hit threshold and get +BBBfor each cabal Ritual. And Rite of flame is +Rx # of Rite of Flames in the graveyard. If we need to deal 30 damage. We may be past turn 3. And Assuming we make all our land drops. We get +2*(1-Turn #) and +1 more if on our critical turn we drop a gemstone mine instead of a sac land. So by turn 5, we can get an initial 9 mana without the use of any rituals. And in our deck we have 16mana accelerants.
There are countless situations, pile requirements, answers to put into your Doomsday Piles. You have to account for the storm count you generate building up to or before casting doomsday. You need to think about how much mana it will take. How much life it will cost, (Doomsday ½ your life, Infernal Contract ½ your life, If you have a Gitaxian probe but need to pay the alternate cost, -2 Life). Lets say you started at 5. You Doomsday, go down to 2 life, you can no longer use Gitaxian probe. But, you can still use infernal contract. The deck is extremely Flexible, but you have to be willing to adapt, and be quick to do so.
Doomsday is a monster; powerful, flexible, interesting, but extremely unforgiving. Making it difficult for “stronger players” to use and likewise that much more challenging for newer players, or those first delving into the storm mechanic.
The easy part, is learning what to do before Doomsday. Learning how to use your cantrips to build your hand. And using duress, Gitaxian Probe to gain knowledge of your opponents hand. Learning to play around soft counters like Spell Snare, and Spell Pierce. Or if you need a duress to nullify that Force of Will.
There is no guesswork with this. And this takes practice, memorizing and time. More than anything, it requires a lot of time. As when you are able to go off, you will know that the game is over. There are few surprises that cannot be dealt with, and assuming you know your requirements and piles, there is no fizzling.
Pass the turn piles:
These are less common, however there are instances where you may on your turn play Dark Ritual -> Doomsday. Pass the turn. Then combo out the following turn. I.e.
There have been dedicated threads to doomsday piles. And as you play you will have to take the time to think and find an answer. Every game becomes a puzzle and you will continue to find new piles for new situations.
Deck Development, ideas and theories
I started messing with sac-land tendrils as a challenge. I wanted to improve upon a budget storm deck and create one that could potentially win against some competitive decks. However, we lose 2 major things with budget.
1.) Consistency.
2.) Speed
The first is noticed in the original Sac Land Tendrils thread. The original deck fizzled to itself. It folded to any sort of countermagic as it had no protection. And it was fairly slow due to inconsistencies.
The speed of both decks also comes from the fact that most of our lands come into play tapped. However…. Despite this slowing us down, it allows for 4-5 mana off lands alone on turn 3. 2 sac-lands + 3rd turn gemstone mine can allow for an initial 5 mana pre rituals. This allows for a very strong/consistent turn 3 kill. This frankly gives this budget deck an extremely quick clock. Turn 3 is fast. Extremely fast actually. Many competitive combo decks can potentially win turn 1 or combo out turn 1. However, more often than not, the critical turn is 3, with some protection. This deck can follow that as well.
Redundancy. Having multiple cards that do the same thing. Accelerants like Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Rite of Flame. All add mana, and cheaply. Having a wishboard, or using burning wish as Doomsday’s 4-7. Using things like ponder and night’s whisper in the early turns to assemble our hand find the missing pieces, (Accelerant, Business, Protection, Cantrip).
Cons to redundancy:
Multiples of Meditate/Infernal Contract. These are relatively bad in your opening hand. However, it can be advantageous. You can use them to dig, or get an extra spell in your Doomsday pile to increase storm count. This redundancy is almost a necessity though. Due to our limitations in colors and accelerants, there are very specific cases where only 1 of the 2 cards are castable post doomsday, and having both has been a necessary evil. As otherwise these slots could be used for more protection or cantrip/consistency.
Other Notes
Many storm pilots, including myself, tend to use multiple die to as a tool to keep track of things. using a 10 sided die for Storm count, and 6 sided for each UBRWGX.
I also recommend learning a few basic piles and writing them down. Using tools like flash cards can also help you to memorize these piles. Knowing the Requirements. Whats in hand? What's in play? How much mana do you have available? how much storm does it generate post doomsday?
Last of all. Take the time to play with friends, and if you can't find an answer by yourself. Have a friend help. Think it out, and you might be able to find something. You will continue to learn and be challenged with this deck.
Shelldock Isle itself is Budget, Emrakul isn't though, but you can always use it to cast Maniac
I would be willing to test this deck as I really like Doomsday combo.
I think Ebon Stronghold is an auto include in the deck as the BB from sacing helps to cast Doomsday on the turn you are going off
not sure on Meditate or Ideas Unbound for the deck
There really isn't agood reason to play isle without emrakul.
I tested Ebon, and what i ended up finding was that i benefit more from the other lands as they produce 3 different colors. All of which create black. 2 making red and 2 making blue. This is significant as we have 12 sources to create some form of BBB (not lands, DR, CR, MM) for doomsday, or some combination of 2 lands + LP as well.
Due to the budget constraints and limited production of on color mana, it is important to have a variety of starting colors. as once we get started things kind of fall into place. 3 lands = doomsday is castable. 1 Dark ritual makes DD castable as wtih 1 cabal, and usually 1 manamorphose.
Finding BBB is less problematic for doomsday than it is for infernal contract. And this is why i found i needed to include meditate. We have enough blue sources that sometimes the cost of 2U is easier than BBB post doomsday.
IU testing proved to be wasted space. It is too narrow, and UU can be difficult. and almost always there was a better solution using meditate.
There really isn't agood reason to play isle without emrakul.
I tested Ebon, and what i ended up finding was that i benefit more from the other lands as they produce 3 different colors. All of which create black. 2 making red and 2 making blue. This is significant as we have 12 sources to create some form of BBB (not lands, DR, CR, MM) for doomsday, or some combination of 2 lands + LP as well.
Due to the budget constraints and limited production of on color mana, it is important to have a variety of starting colors. as once we get started things kind of fall into place. 3 lands = doomsday is castable. 1 Dark ritual makes DD castable as wtih 1 cabal, and usually 1 manamorphose.
Finding BBB is less problematic for doomsday than it is for infernal contract. And this is why i found i needed to include meditate. We have enough blue sources that sometimes the cost of 2U is easier than BBB post doomsday.
IU testing proved to be wasted space. It is too narrow, and UU can be difficult. and almost always there was a better solution using meditate.
Fair arguments I would guess testing would be the easiest way to check
Did some minor changes, added 4 PoN as protection spells, there's someone whom I could get Pacts from in case I would seriously build this deck. Being free is an advantage. This deck need every bit of mana it can get.
A little unsure on the lands, I used Ebon Stronghold in the original Sac Land Tendrils deck and those worked just fine. Well, testing will tell if the ES are not needed in this deck.
Cards that were excluded:
Silence,Orim’s chant These are not on color. Between our lands, rituals, and lack of color filtering, these are nearly uncastable. Making Duress,Inquisition of Kozilek far stronger, or more often useable and useful.
Completely agree on that. Being forced to use the Petal or Manamorphose to cast an off color protection spell isn't good, the few color fixing spells that we have is better used for helping to cast other things.
On the limited testing that I've done, it's a little more complicated than Sac Land Tendrils.. things need to be done a little more carefully. Or maybe it's just that I'm not yet used on piloting decks like these. One thing I'm glad about this deck is that it's less vulnerable to Stony Silence and Null Rod because the deck uses less artifacts than Sac Land Tendrils.
On the limited testing that I've done, it's a little more complicated than Sac Land Tendrils.. things need to be done a little more carefully. Or maybe it's just that I'm not yet used on piloting decks like these. One thing I'm glad about this deck is that it's less vulnerable to Stony Silence and Null Rod because the deck uses less artifacts than Sac Land Tendrils.
What decks are problem matchups, or what do you play against all the time?
The most problem matchups are of course decks that have mainboard counterspells. Someone in my playgroup has a budget Mono U control deck that can be transformed game 2 into an aggro control deck with jittes . The rest of the decks I play against are mostly aggro, they are generally ok in game 1. Game 2 is a different story, because that's where they bring in Teeg, Canonist, Stony Silence / Null Rod (not used anymore after they realize that the deck has few artifacts), more Thalia (very common), Glowrider (rare to see this, but saw it once), and Pyrostatic Pillar (there's someone using Burn in my playgroup).
Dread of Night is useful, because Thalia is quite common and even mainboard in some decks.
Sorry. Can't help with testing on whether this deck would be bothered by Wasteland. My Merfolk playing friend is taking a break from MTG, and the rest of us are semi-budget players who don't own Wasteland.
I assume wastelands going to be brutal.... Not much to get around that...
I couldn't find any good sorcery based bounce/artifact destruction. Might be the next thing to look for as an answer to. As a burning wish target as opposed to a DD-pile answer. Ill see what i can find for it.
Its things like burn/pillar that i think discard is better than pacts. As you can turn 1 duress these decks to hit the problem cards. In general with storm decks, pro-active solutions are better than reactive. As you have to commit so hard to the combo.
I cant imagine maveric and its ilk being too much of a problem between Virtues Ruin/Dread of Night/Slaughter Pact/Chain of Vapor. kAnd if they dont find anything by turn 3... .its even easier as they have no tricks/gimmicks.
For counterspells: Defense Grid might be plausible. Its a little slow...but might work... Worth testing at least.
The best sorcery artifact removal is Shattering Spree. Especially for a deck like this where Chalice for 1 cuts a lot of action.
Actually i meant to say enchantment. I had been using meltdown, but that works as well. I was using meltdown, as you dont need to have multiple red mana for it.
And Serenity was listed although off color, is probably the best bet for things like enchantress and still good in affinity game 2. But could use some kind of main deck tutor target. But its not necessarily needed.
Both are also on minor colors too. But Paraselene is a good mention. The 3 drop is less of an issue, as usually if you are needing a destroy all enchantment effect, they wont have much hate left after this. Otherwise things like leyline of sanctity can be answered with chain of vapor during the winning turn.
There is a sorcery speed blue bounce as well that's not too bad. But i can't remember what its called off the top of my head.
So I have kind of an odd question. I'm trying to work a Sac Land Doomsday deck into some casual games that I play. The only issue is, I'd say about 80% of our games are multiplayer, making a Tendrils for 60 or greater life almost impossible. I've been goldfishing an idea using Laboratory Maniac as a win con, but it's a bit more inconsistent than the Tendrils builds are for obvious reasons. Any ideas on that front? I realize this isn't the main focus of the deck so sorry if this veers things in a stupid direction.
It's not stupid, but it's easier for most opponents to remove a 2/2 creature in response to a draw spell and win than it is for the, to counter Tendrils. A build like that would be more U/B than a sac land version though, as meditate is your new best friend. There was a tuned doomsday deck that relied on Lab Maniac in an SCG not too long ago. It didn't top but it did well enough from what I remember, and their was a thread on salvation discussing parts of it.
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It's not stupid, but it's easier for most opponents to remove a 2/2 creature in response to a draw spell and win than it is for the, to counter Tendrils. A build like that would be more U/B than a sac land version though, as meditate is your new best friend. There was a tuned doomsday deck that relied on Lab Maniac in an SCG not too long ago. It didn't top but it did well enough from what I remember, and their was a thread on salvation discussing parts of it.
I will have to take a look and see if I can find that deck then! The plan right now is just to either just go gung ho into the doomsday and hope and pray there's no removal (being casual I don't really mind this so much), or to get off a silence before casting doomsday. That of course makes the conditions for going off even more fragile though, so I will take a look for that deck you mentioned to see if there's anywhere I can tighten things up, thanks!
So I have kind of an odd question. I'm trying to work a Sac Land Doomsday deck into some casual games that I play. The only issue is, I'd say about 80% of our games are multiplayer, making a Tendrils for 60 or greater life almost impossible. I've been goldfishing an idea using Laboratory Maniac as a win con, but it's a bit more inconsistent than the Tendrils builds are for obvious reasons. Any ideas on that front? I realize this isn't the main focus of the deck so sorry if this veers things in a stupid direction.
Basically building Something like
MN/TS
xxxxx
Laboratory Maniac
Gitaxian Probe / cantrip
Unearth
You need 2 cantrip effects to win. Or 1 cantrip + passing the turn and then Mana for cantrip + UB for the MN/TS and Unearth. Depending on your hand and situation. There are ways to enable Pact of Negation in this pile. Especially if your cantrip to draw into the pile is Brainstorm. As you can swap a useless card in hand for the Pact of Negation in the pile, and bury the useless card with thought scour.
This is probably the most efficient way of doing it however you can do it with meditate just as easily.
Doing something like
Meditate
LP
LP
LM
GP
It would require Cantrip mana + 2U+1 + U if you dont have the life to play probe. This way would also just be adding in 1x Laboratory Maniac. And you could still go for storm most of the time. But if you cant get there with storm you have the option of lab man.
You can look at Empty the Warrens and Shelldock Isle Emrakul Win cons as well. And then putting a second doomsday in your pile at the bottom. So that when you draw all your cards you can cast a second doomsday making a new library with doomsdays in it. However after losing half your life and having a combo gone off, i dont konw that your friends will be keen to let you live.
Another option, is that if you can afford Sensei's Divining Top. Is to run 4 of these, or buy 2 for the sake of the combo. And using Helm of Awakening + 2x SdT + Grapeshot for infinite damage. IF you have a top in play You can do something like:
Requiring. SDT in play +4U. Flip the top for meditate. Drawing Helm/GS/SDT/SDT. Playing helm with remaining 2. Play tops for free. Flip tops over and over again until you have generated enough storm. Play lotus petal -> grapeshot
This combo can also be used to play through Gaddock teeg and Ethersworn canonist.
Actually i meant to say enchantment. I had been using meltdown, but that works as well. I was using meltdown, as you dont need to have multiple red mana for it.
And Serenity was listed although off color, is probably the best bet for things like enchantress and still good in affinity game 2. But could use some kind of main deck tutor target. But its not necessarily needed.
I ran Serenity in my ANT sb for a while. It works.
I ran Serenity in my ANT sb for a while. It works.
Its what i currently use in DDFT. The issue here is that there are only 6 lands that produce white withouth having to sac something or having to burn LP or MM in order to get white.
Black and red arent efficient at dealing with enchantments, and Serenity requires passing the turn or passing the turn + saccing resource which in turn makes the combo turn slower and could potentially make you unable to combo with what is left.
However, its extremely efficient for things like affinity or chalice as chalice never comes down at 2 vs storm. And i think is the current form of hate i have listed in the primer.
Hmm what would be the first few additions if budget was expanded by around 100-150$? If someone could fill me in because im thinking it would include tops and some other stuff but idk really.
I'm sure adding in tops will improve the deck. Especially its consistency.
However, once we start to look into top, the land base might need to change. As Turn 1 top for turn 2 filtering/comboing might become important or rather is very important, especially for speed concerns, as we will want to be more active .
Otherwise, sideboard options open up. Time Spiral and Emrakul
Or else looking into a stronger land base using fetchlands and maybe 1-2 shocks + basics might prove worthwhile. Not something i really looked into as i didn't want to add to the original price. But I'm sure we could look into it, and make a second decklist with a slightly less budgeted disclaimer.
You could test it.... I guess as a replacement to burning wish. Downside, it costs a lot of life, which becomes fairly precious considering probes/doomsday/Infernal contract.
Downsides to it. Its not good post doomsday. Doesnt draw into pile, nor does it enable anything in piles. It costs two mana, so you cant reliably play it before turn 3. Slowing down the expected combo turn just a bit. It requires UB, requiring specific mana combinations which is hard with our landbase prior to the combo turn, as the choice of saccing vs. tapping helps ease our color situation, and having to sac something early to use Vault seems problematic.
I haven't tested it, but in theory, i see a lot of issues.
Introduction
This version of Sac Land Tendrils uses one very powerful card Doomsday. This namesake card does everything and more. It allows us to set up any 5 cards which will help us answer Problem Cards and get our lethal storm count for Tendril’s Of Agony.
I highly recommend reading the following article written by emidln, one of the creators of DDFT and amongst the biggest contributors and players of the deck.
Decklist:
4x Lotus Petal
Instant:
4x Cabal Ritual
4x Dark Ritual
4x Manamorphose
1x Meditate
1x Chain of Vapor
Sorcery:
3x Duress
4x Burning Wish
3x Doomsday
4x Gitaxian Probe
1x infernal Contract
1x Night's Whisper
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Ponder
4x Rite of Flame
1x Tendrils of agony
4x Ancient Spring
4x Geothermal Crevice
4x Sulfur Vent
2x Gemstone Mine
1x Empty the Warrens
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Doomsday
1x Duress
1x Firespout
3x Dread of Night
1x Slaughter Pack
1x Chain Of Vapor
1x Meltdown
2x Serenity
Non-Budget Sideboard Suggestions.
1x Shelldock Isle
1x Emrakul, The Aeons Torn
1x Virtues Ruin I selected firespout however as a budget replacement.
1x Time Spiral
Cards and Card Choices:
Cards in the deck:
Doomsday / Burning Wish This is our engine. Almost every game the idea is to find and resolve doomsday and win. This can also be done by Burning wishing for our Sideboarded doomsday. Or finding through our cantrips, ponder, Night’s Whisper. Having 7x Business Spells, + cantrips should help eliminate the chances of not finding a doomsday within the first 2-4 turns.
Meditate ,Infernal Contract These are used to draw our pile. Both are included as color requirements can be tricky and sometimes it is easier to play one over the other. Also, life can be an issue for Infernal Contract. If you are having a hard time finding doomsday. Both of these can be used in early turns to find it. Careful again with Infernal Contract due to the life loss.
Empty the Warrens This is in here for specific cases. Occasionally you have those games that are just explosive. A hand of Gemstone Mine, Burning Wish,Dark Ritual, Lotus Petal,Right of Flame, Rite of Flame. Or some turn 2/3 variation can provide 10+ goblin tokens. Oftentimes enough to win. There are games where your opponent may have 40 life and getting 20 storm for tendrils isn't feasible. However, you might be able to generate 10-12 storm. By putting a Doomsday as the last card in your pile, you can combo out, get a ton of Empty the Warrens tokens (10,15,20+), and then use Doomsday so that you don't deck yourself and get 5 more turns to swing with your horde of goblins.
The landbase is another name-sake. These Sac lands allow for a very explosive turn 3. As well as providing multiple colors, allowing this deck to be run in 2+colors without the expense of fetchlands and duals. These lands and the exclusion of Lion’s Eye Diamond Are what really slim the price for the deck.
Tendril’s of Agony There is one main deck and 1 sideboarded. This allows for multiple piles. As without Lion’s Eye Diamond, getting enough Red and Black mana post Doomsday in order to use burning wish solely to find Tendrils of Agony proved to be difficult and slowed the deck down. If you do have the mana you can go this route for +1 storm count.
Duress, Inquisition of kozilek These are our protection. We have 6 spells main decked to get rid of counters and annoying creatures to protect our combo and 1 in the sideboard as a wish target. Duress and Gitaxian Probe can either make a safe path for our combo or give us some insight so we know what we have to play around or through.
Manamorphose Originally I wanted to cut this card. However when goldfishing I found it extremely useful for both the use of its draw ability , to start digging into our Doomsday pile as well as its ability to filter our colors to cast Infernal Contract,Meditate. It can also be used in a pile as a “free” cantrip if the life loss from Gitaxian Probe would be significant.
Cards that were excluded:
Silence,Orim’s chant These are not on color. Between our lands, rituals, and lack of color filtering, these are nearly uncastable. Making Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek far stronger, or more often useable and useful.
Chromatic Star, Chromatic Sphere. By mainstreaming the use of Black and red, having fewer color requirements (not using Ideas Unbound and other cantrips as seen in the Sac Land tendrils list) As well as excluding the use of Silence and the need for white. The color filtering is not needed. This deck is also not based on chaining draws/cantrips and the draw effects or replacement effects are no longer as useful.
Ideas Unbound This is often used in the DDFT builds as the main cantrip. However this deck is terribly inefficient in creating U, let alone UU. And having Infernal Contract,Meditate and Ideas unbound was too redundant and wasted slots.
Playing the Deck:
So you decide to pick this up and goldfish. Open your hand, find some cantrips, rituals and doomsday.
After playing Dark Ritual, Rite of Flame, Manamorphose we end up with BBBURW. Holding onto a doomsday and a Gitaxian Probe… but now what? (UWcoming from sac lands/manamorphose)
Play doomsday:
You make the pile(Meditate, Lotus Petal, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Tendrils Of Agony
Pay 2 life for Gitaxian Probe.
Draw Meditate
Play meditate,
Play Lotus Petal
Play dark ritual x2
Cast Tendrils of Agony for 20.
But that’s easy. What if the situation isn’t as easy. What if we have a little more mana, but we know they have a stifle in hand that we need to get rid of. Or they have a gaddock teeg in play we need to bounce.
This can all be done with doomsday. The thing is you might need more mana. If we have 2UBBPost doomsday we can now afford to put a duress in our pile instead of lotus petal.
Or what if we need to generate a storm count of 15? This is costly, but for 3UBBpost doomsday we can do this.
Requirements:
3UUB+ Cantrip mana post doomsday. 2 cantrips in hand. minimum of 4 life.
After Doomsday we build:
Meditate, Dark Ritual, Dark, Ritual, Doomsday, Tendrils of Agony.
Using the2U to pay for meditate. The B for Dark Ritual + Dark Ritual. Giving us 1UBBBBB Floating.
Play a Second Doomsday!
Making: Meditate, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Tendrils of Agony ( random card)
Orrr…. If you have the mana/life for your first cantrip: Meditate, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Cantrip, Tendrils of Agony.
The first of which adds + 8 to your storm count. And the second adding 9. Not counting any amount of Duress/Rituals and the original Doomsday.
Storm can be further increased by 1 for an additional 1R mana, or by 2 by using burning wish to fetch both the second Doomsday, and Tendrils of Agony. Gaining you 11 storm count, not counting the rituals/cantrips/protection and Doomsday played to get to this point. So if we had played a duress, Dark Ritual, Doomsday, Cantrip, + our double doomsday pile using burning wish
Pile:Top
:bottom.
5UUBRR Required. Using manamorphose as our second cantrip. (this is perfect for these situations, as it costs 0 mana to draw a card) With this chain we will have generated 15 storm, hitting for a whopping 30 life loss.
This seems like a lot of mana. But when you think about it. On turn 3, We can get +5 mana from lands. +BBFor Each Dark Ritual, + Bfor cabal ritual. Or if lucky we hit threshold and get +BBBfor each cabal Ritual. And Rite of flame is +Rx # of Rite of Flames in the graveyard. If we need to deal 30 damage. We may be past turn 3. And Assuming we make all our land drops. We get +2*(1-Turn #) and +1 more if on our critical turn we drop a gemstone mine instead of a sac land. So by turn 5, we can get an initial 9 mana without the use of any rituals. And in our deck we have 16mana accelerants.
There are countless situations, pile requirements, answers to put into your Doomsday Piles. You have to account for the storm count you generate building up to or before casting doomsday. You need to think about how much mana it will take. How much life it will cost, (Doomsday ½ your life, Infernal Contract ½ your life, If you have a Gitaxian probe but need to pay the alternate cost, -2 Life). Lets say you started at 5. You Doomsday, go down to 2 life, you can no longer use Gitaxian probe. But, you can still use infernal contract. The deck is extremely Flexible, but you have to be willing to adapt, and be quick to do so.
Doomsday is a monster; powerful, flexible, interesting, but extremely unforgiving. Making it difficult for “stronger players” to use and likewise that much more challenging for newer players, or those first delving into the storm mechanic.
The easy part, is learning what to do before Doomsday. Learning how to use your cantrips to build your hand. And using duress, Gitaxian Probe to gain knowledge of your opponents hand. Learning to play around soft counters like Spell Snare, and Spell Pierce. Or if you need a duress to nullify that Force of Will.
There is no guesswork with this. And this takes practice, memorizing and time. More than anything, it requires a lot of time. As when you are able to go off, you will know that the game is over. There are few surprises that cannot be dealt with, and assuming you know your requirements and piles, there is no fizzling.
Pass the turn piles:
These are less common, however there are instances where you may on your turn play Dark Ritual -> Doomsday. Pass the turn. Then combo out the following turn. I.e.
Opponent at 18, Fetches, Force of Will, not uncommon in legacy.
Your hand, Dark Ritual, Doomsday, Manamorphose. Manamorphose
Your lands: Sulfur Vent, Gemstone Mine.
Dark Ritual -> Doomsday -> pass turn
Set up:
Draw dark ritual
1) Sac sulfur Vent,UR floating
2) Manamorphose, BR, Drawing Dark Ritual
3) Dark RitualBBBR
4) Dark Ritual BBBBBR
5) Manamorphose, Drawing manamorphose BBBBBR
6) Manamorphose, Drawing manamorphose BBBBBR
7) Manamorphose, Drawing Burning Wish BBBBBR
8) Burning Wish BBBB
9) Tendrils of agony for 18
There have been dedicated threads to doomsday piles. And as you play you will have to take the time to think and find an answer. Every game becomes a puzzle and you will continue to find new piles for new situations.
Deck Development, ideas and theories
I started messing with sac-land tendrils as a challenge. I wanted to improve upon a budget storm deck and create one that could potentially win against some competitive decks. However, we lose 2 major things with budget.
1.) Consistency.
2.) Speed
The first is noticed in the original Sac Land Tendrils thread. The original deck fizzled to itself. It folded to any sort of countermagic as it had no protection. And it was fairly slow due to inconsistencies.
The speed of both decks also comes from the fact that most of our lands come into play tapped. However…. Despite this slowing us down, it allows for 4-5 mana off lands alone on turn 3. 2 sac- lands + 3rd turn gemstone mine can allow for an initial 5 mana pre rituals. This allows for a very strong/consistent turn 3 kill. This frankly gives this budget deck an extremely quick clock. Turn 3 is fast. Extremely fast actually. Many competitive combo decks can potentially win turn 1 or combo out turn 1. However, more often than not, the critical turn is 3, with some protection. This deck can follow that as well.
Redundancy. Having multiple cards that do the same thing. Accelerants like Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Rite of Flame. All add mana, and cheaply. Having a wishboard, or using burning wish as Doomsday’s 4-7. Using things like ponder and night’s whisper in the early turns to assemble our hand find the missing pieces, (Accelerant, Business, Protection, Cantrip).
Cons to redundancy:
Multiples of Meditate/Infernal Contract. These are relatively bad in your opening hand. However, it can be advantageous. You can use them to dig, or get an extra spell in your Doomsday pile to increase storm count. This redundancy is almost a necessity though. Due to our limitations in colors and accelerants, there are very specific cases where only 1 of the 2 cards are castable post doomsday, and having both has been a necessary evil. As otherwise these slots could be used for more protection or cantrip/consistency.
Other Notes
Many storm pilots, including myself, tend to use multiple die to as a tool to keep track of things. using a 10 sided die for Storm count, and 6 sided for each UBRWGX.
I also recommend learning a few basic piles and writing them down. Using tools like flash cards can also help you to memorize these piles. Knowing the Requirements. Whats in hand? What's in play? How much mana do you have available? how much storm does it generate post doomsday?
Last of all. Take the time to play with friends, and if you can't find an answer by yourself. Have a friend help. Think it out, and you might be able to find something. You will continue to learn and be challenged with this deck.
UBRWDDFTWBRU
UBRWGTESGWRBU
I would be willing to test this deck as I really like Doomsday combo.
I think Ebon Stronghold is an auto include in the deck as the BB from sacing helps to cast Doomsday on the turn you are going off
not sure on Meditate or Ideas Unbound for the deck
Paper: WUR Waffle Control, RG and U Tron
MTGO: U Tron, BRG Living End, B Infect
Testing Modern on MTGO and helping to craft decks on a Budget
I stream!
Hermit Druid Combo:
There really isn't agood reason to play isle without emrakul.
I tested Ebon, and what i ended up finding was that i benefit more from the other lands as they produce 3 different colors. All of which create black. 2 making red and 2 making blue. This is significant as we have 12 sources to create some form of BBB (not lands, DR, CR, MM) for doomsday, or some combination of 2 lands + LP as well.
Due to the budget constraints and limited production of on color mana, it is important to have a variety of starting colors. as once we get started things kind of fall into place. 3 lands = doomsday is castable. 1 Dark ritual makes DD castable as wtih 1 cabal, and usually 1 manamorphose.
Finding BBB is less problematic for doomsday than it is for infernal contract. And this is why i found i needed to include meditate. We have enough blue sources that sometimes the cost of 2U is easier than BBB post doomsday.
IU testing proved to be wasted space. It is too narrow, and UU can be difficult. and almost always there was a better solution using meditate.
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Fair arguments I would guess testing would be the easiest way to check
Staying on Budget, Sideboard Silence?
Paper: WUR Waffle Control, RG and U Tron
MTGO: U Tron, BRG Living End, B Infect
Testing Modern on MTGO and helping to craft decks on a Budget
I stream!
Hermit Druid Combo:
4x Lotus Petal
Instant:
4x Cabal Ritual
4x Dark Ritual
4x Manamorphose
1x Meditate
4x Burning Wish
3x Doomsday
4x Gitaxian Probe
1x Infernal Contract
1x Night's Whisper
4x Ponder
4x Rite of Flame
1x Tendrils of agony
4x Pact of Negation
1x Chain of Vapor
Land:
4x Ancient Spring
4x Geothermal Crevice
4x Sulfur Vent
2x Gemstone Mine
1x Empty the Warrens
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Doomsday
1x Duress
1x Firespout
3x Dread of Night
1x Slaughter Pack
1x Virtue's Ruin
1x Serenity
1x Shelldock Isle
1x Emrakul, The Aeons Torn
It's a nice primer.
Did some minor changes, added 4 PoN as protection spells, there's someone whom I could get Pacts from in case I would seriously build this deck. Being free is an advantage. This deck need every bit of mana it can get.
A little unsure on the lands, I used Ebon Stronghold in the original Sac Land Tendrils deck and those worked just fine. Well, testing will tell if the ES are not needed in this deck.
Completely agree on that. Being forced to use the Petal or Manamorphose to cast an off color protection spell isn't good, the few color fixing spells that we have is better used for helping to cast other things.
Nexus MTG News // Nexus - Magic Art Gallery // MTG Dual Land Color Ratios Analyzer // MTG Card Drawing Odds Calculator
Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
Apparently it can, and has room for some protection. I think it's time I picked up this deck.
Thanks for the primer, it's excellent work!
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Also, reminds me, Slaughter pact is a really good sideboard card for things like thalia, gaddoc teeg, etc....
UBRWDDFTWBRU
UBRWGTESGWRBU
I still haven't decided on those two slots.
On the limited testing that I've done, it's a little more complicated than Sac Land Tendrils.. things need to be done a little more carefully. Or maybe it's just that I'm not yet used on piloting decks like these. One thing I'm glad about this deck is that it's less vulnerable to Stony Silence and Null Rod because the deck uses less artifacts than Sac Land Tendrils.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
What decks are problem matchups, or what do you play against all the time?
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Dread of Night is useful, because Thalia is quite common and even mainboard in some decks.
Sorry. Can't help with testing on whether this deck would be bothered by Wasteland. My Merfolk playing friend is taking a break from MTG, and the rest of us are semi-budget players who don't own Wasteland.
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Want to play a UW control deck in modern, but don't have jace or snaps?
Please come visit us at the Emeria Titan control thread
I couldn't find any good sorcery based bounce/artifact destruction. Might be the next thing to look for as an answer to. As a burning wish target as opposed to a DD-pile answer. Ill see what i can find for it.
Its things like burn/pillar that i think discard is better than pacts. As you can turn 1 duress these decks to hit the problem cards. In general with storm decks, pro-active solutions are better than reactive. As you have to commit so hard to the combo.
I cant imagine maveric and its ilk being too much of a problem between Virtues Ruin/Dread of Night/Slaughter Pact/Chain of Vapor. kAnd if they dont find anything by turn 3... .its even easier as they have no tricks/gimmicks.
For counterspells: Defense Grid might be plausible. Its a little slow...but might work... Worth testing at least.
UBRWDDFTWBRU
UBRWGTESGWRBU
Afro Dave, @st4rwind on Twitter
Level 2 Judge
Legacy Decks:
- Imperial Bloodwolf R
- Rifter RW
- Rockman WBG
- Burn R
- T.E.S. WUBRG
- Belcher RG
- 10 Land Stompy G
- Zoo (budget) RGW
Actually i meant to say enchantment. I had been using meltdown, but that works as well. I was using meltdown, as you dont need to have multiple red mana for it.
And Serenity was listed although off color, is probably the best bet for things like enchantress and still good in affinity game 2. But could use some kind of main deck tutor target. But its not necessarily needed.
UBRWDDFTWBRU
UBRWGTESGWRBU
Afro Dave, @st4rwind on Twitter
Level 2 Judge
Legacy Decks:
- Imperial Bloodwolf R
- Rifter RW
- Rockman WBG
- Burn R
- T.E.S. WUBRG
- Belcher RG
- 10 Land Stompy G
- Zoo (budget) RGW
There is a sorcery speed blue bounce as well that's not too bad. But i can't remember what its called off the top of my head.
UBRWDDFTWBRU
UBRWGTESGWRBU
Afro Dave, @st4rwind on Twitter
Level 2 Judge
Legacy Decks:
- Imperial Bloodwolf R
- Rifter RW
- Rockman WBG
- Burn R
- T.E.S. WUBRG
- Belcher RG
- 10 Land Stompy G
- Zoo (budget) RGW
I will have to take a look and see if I can find that deck then! The plan right now is just to either just go gung ho into the doomsday and hope and pray there's no removal (being casual I don't really mind this so much), or to get off a silence before casting doomsday. That of course makes the conditions for going off even more fragile though, so I will take a look for that deck you mentioned to see if there's anywhere I can tighten things up, thanks!
I would go with Stephen Menendian (Edit:corrected spelling) idea of using Mental Note / Thought Scour + unearth + laboratory maniac
Basically building Something like
MN/TS
xxxxx
Laboratory Maniac
Gitaxian Probe / cantrip
Unearth
You need 2 cantrip effects to win. Or 1 cantrip + passing the turn and then Mana for cantrip + UB for the MN/TS and Unearth. Depending on your hand and situation. There are ways to enable Pact of Negation in this pile. Especially if your cantrip to draw into the pile is Brainstorm. As you can swap a useless card in hand for the Pact of Negation in the pile, and bury the useless card with thought scour.
This is probably the most efficient way of doing it however you can do it with meditate just as easily.
Doing something like
Meditate
LP
LP
LM
GP
It would require Cantrip mana + 2U+1 + U if you dont have the life to play probe. This way would also just be adding in 1x Laboratory Maniac. And you could still go for storm most of the time. But if you cant get there with storm you have the option of lab man.
You can look at Empty the Warrens and Shelldock Isle Emrakul Win cons as well. And then putting a second doomsday in your pile at the bottom. So that when you draw all your cards you can cast a second doomsday making a new library with doomsdays in it. However after losing half your life and having a combo gone off, i dont konw that your friends will be keen to let you live.
Another option, is that if you can afford Sensei's Divining Top. Is to run 4 of these, or buy 2 for the sake of the combo. And using Helm of Awakening + 2x SdT + Grapeshot for infinite damage. IF you have a top in play You can do something like:
Requiring. SDT in play +4U. Flip the top for meditate. Drawing Helm/GS/SDT/SDT. Playing helm with remaining 2. Play tops for free. Flip tops over and over again until you have generated enough storm. Play lotus petal -> grapeshot
This combo can also be used to play through Gaddock teeg and Ethersworn canonist.
UBRWDDFTWBRU
UBRWGTESGWRBU
I ran Serenity in my ANT sb for a while. It works.
Thank you mchief111, great sig
Lvl 37 Planeswalker
Current:
Legacy:
:symu::symb::symr::symw::symg: TES | Spiral Tide | MUD | :symu::symb::symg: Lands | Burn | :symr::symbg: Goblins | Elf Combo
Vintage:
:symb::symu: Titan Dredge | :symb::symu::symw: Bomberman
Modern:
:symu::symr: Kiki-Twin | :symr::symg: Tron
Standard:
Wip
EDH:
:symb::symu::symw: Zur
Its what i currently use in DDFT. The issue here is that there are only 6 lands that produce white withouth having to sac something or having to burn LP or MM in order to get white.
Black and red arent efficient at dealing with enchantments, and Serenity requires passing the turn or passing the turn + saccing resource which in turn makes the combo turn slower and could potentially make you unable to combo with what is left.
However, its extremely efficient for things like affinity or chalice as chalice never comes down at 2 vs storm. And i think is the current form of hate i have listed in the primer.
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UBRWGTESGWRBU
However, once we start to look into top, the land base might need to change. As Turn 1 top for turn 2 filtering/comboing might become important or rather is very important, especially for speed concerns, as we will want to be more active .
Otherwise, sideboard options open up. Time Spiral and Emrakul
Or else looking into a stronger land base using fetchlands and maybe 1-2 shocks + basics might prove worthwhile. Not something i really looked into as i didn't want to add to the original price. But I'm sure we could look into it, and make a second decklist with a slightly less budgeted disclaimer.
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Downsides to it. Its not good post doomsday. Doesnt draw into pile, nor does it enable anything in piles. It costs two mana, so you cant reliably play it before turn 3. Slowing down the expected combo turn just a bit. It requires UB, requiring specific mana combinations which is hard with our landbase prior to the combo turn, as the choice of saccing vs. tapping helps ease our color situation, and having to sac something early to use Vault seems problematic.
I haven't tested it, but in theory, i see a lot of issues.
UBRWDDFTWBRU
UBRWGTESGWRBU