MTG Salvation

One other plan against U/W is just avoid going all in. They aren’t going to beat us quickly. Generally, try to blow up their nonbasics while and get to 5 lands. Then start hardcasting draft chaff. If they counter it, fine, you can cascade later. If they Path it, you have more lands to cast fatties. Play Simian Spirit Guide as a 2/2 and beat down. Eventually they have to tap out to answer and you can hopefully kill them in one shot.

Skullclamp is a good place to start.

But I also think your question needs a bit of explanation. For example, if you’re playing in a normal meta Phyreixan Arena will draw you anywhere from 5 to 10 cards over the course of the game. In a more competitive meta where you won’t have that many turns, Read the Bones might be better.

Or maybe you are asking about burst draw spells? Necrepotence is a pretty good one. Necrologia is one of my favorites as well.

And then again, you might’ve playing mono-white or something, so these black spells might be useless.

Generally in any mono colored deck, I throw in the cycling lands that I can over basics. Just a little bit of flood protection and if the deck isn’t super competitive the tapped land won’t hurt you. Also, might want to consider some utility lands like Strip Mine and Scavenger Grounds.

You might consider Heroic Intervention to protect you when you are going for a kill. Also, land wise, perhaps Yavimaya Hollow.

If you don't mind infinite combos, you could pick up a Phyrexian Altar, which will mill everyone out with Gravecrawler+ any other zombie. I believe it's about $20 for an UMA one. You could also pick up some fetches like Polluted Delta and the less expensive ones that are half fetches in Bloodstained Mire and Flooded Strand. Those are fairly reasonably priced and they can help you with consistency. Or you could blow it all on a Vampiric Tutor.

I'm not a huge fun of Endless Ranks of the Dead or Open the Graves. They are both 5 mana do-nothing enchantments that put a target on you before you've gotten much of any value.

I am going to challenge myself to comment on a decklist per day for the next week.

Built a rough version on Cockatrice, and I won in a way so hilarious that it bears typing. I had Fblthp and did the Proteus Staff combo, but didn't bother stacking my deck. Kinda too slow online. But I did mana to Mindslaver an Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim player who just so happened to have Aetherflux Reservoir in hand. I was able to make it so the Ayli player got to exactly 1 after killing the others at the table and tapped him out. Little Fblthp then dealt the fatal blow. I imagine it was something like:

**Sees giant machine thing, and stares at it blankly. Pokes it with a tentative finger. A hinge breaks lose, and the entire thing collapses, sending a laser beam into the eyes of an unsuspecting Ayli.**

Ayli: Must destroy SCORPION!!

**Battle ensues, then a giant BOOM! leaving the Scorpion God dead, and Ayli gasping for breath, clinging to life.**

Fblthp: ???

**Fblthp walks over to see what made a loud BOOM! noise. Eye craned upwards to the pulsating tower, he does not notice Ayli gasping for breath as he stands confused upon debris which has fallen on her.

Ayli: (cough) Help... (cough) me... (cough) plea-- (dies)

**Fblthp scratches his head, shrugs his shoulders and wanders off into the city, oblivious to the carnage he has wrought.**

I had the play made against me, but a guy cast Victimize sacrificing the Xantcha, Sleeper Agent I had given him. It was the art where Gix is actually dragging Xantcha to her death.

>:(

That land would be one of the worst lands ever printed. The only redeeming factor is that you made it legendary so some poor sap couldn’t have 2 in play to really screw him or herself so royally. Mana Confluence is so much less of a downside than sculpting your opponent’s hand when tapping mana.

I’m differentiating “bad sportsmanship” from “cheating” for a reason. There are many things that the rules of Magic do not prohibit that a decent person should not do. There is no game rule preventing you from intentionally calling your opponent “Dave” when you know his name is Andrew, for example. It’s totally legal to annoy your opponent this way. There’s no rule preventing 3 players from agreeing to kill “Dave” first every game to ensure he has a bad day. So some forms of bullying are legal. The game also doesn’t prevent you from scooping early. In all of these cases, it’s up to decent people to self-regulate the format to prevent scummy stuff from happening, which helps the culture around the format and grow the game.

Quote from FezHead

Dividing zero damage among a nonzero number of targets is impossible, because you can't assign at least one damage to each target. The way Thought Criminal is attempting to interpret the rule 107.1c breaks a number of other rules. For example, you can't cast a spell without being able to choose a legal set of targets, and you can't refuse to distribute the full amount of damage.

Why isn't an empty set of targets a legal set of targets when no creatures are on the battlefield and every player has a relevant protection ability? I'm not violating the restriction in 107.1c, so there's nothing illegal about that. Nothing specifies what happens if choosing one or more targets is impossible.

There may be damage to divide, but the set of targets is empty. Even though nothing states that this is impossible explicitly by the rules, I'll assume that dividing X>0 damage among zero targets is impossible mathematically. But even if it is, the action of choosing a number as noted by 107.1c is restricted by two criteria only: that I must choose a number in {0, 1, 2, ...}, and if the effect mentions division, that the number chosen be in {1, 2, 3, ...}. These criteria have nothing to do with the actual division of damage. That I will eventually announce a division of damage in the future after this step has no relation to the number I choose based on the criteria now.

I guess what I'm asking is, what exact rules would I be breaking with my interpretation of 107.1c? It's not 601.2d (it only covers one or more targets), and it's not 608.2d (that covers spell resolution, not spell casting).