The problem with Energy Flux is that it effects both players and it costs 2U. In order to pay for this card it makes sense to use artifact mana sources but then the energy flux will be hurting you as well as the opponent. Without artifact mana it is going to be too expensive to cast through enemy spheres. In the rare case where you do have to remove one that is already in play here are the top five ways I know of doing so:
Steel Hellkite: attack the opponent and pay 3 to destroy the energy flux. Ratchet Bomb: if you can manage get three charge counters on then you can sacrifice this to destroy the energy flux. Smokestack: sacrifice inessential artifacts to smokestack and keep your lands. Eventually the opponent may be forced to sacrifice the energy flux. Mycosynth Lattice: this makes everything into artifacts even energy flux itself which is an even more reliable means of getting the opponent to sacrifice his/her energy flux then using smokestack. Spine of Ish Sah: this card was already mentioned by an earlier poster. This is a great option in graveyard oriented workshop decks.
Land destruction spells are essentially never used in Vintage. Use strip mine + crucible of worlds instead. This can't be countered. If you aren't running a Stax deck, then this strategy works best with standstill. For example, Joshua Potucek just won a tournament in bloomberg with this deck.
Sol ring, is arguably the best mana accelerator in the game. Its produces two mana per turn well moxes only produce 1 and black lotus only works once. That extra colorless mana can really help you get past sphere effects.
Library of alexandria combos with land untappers such as mind over matter, frantic search, and candelabra of tawnos to get you the cards you need.
Mental misstep is basically a necessity in this deck because it can counter opposing missteps that are targeting your high tides.
Gush is really solid when most of your lands are islands and you are already running fastbond. You can also add imperial seal as an additional means of acquiring fastbond.
I would make the following modifications to put these cards to use:
-4 bazaar of baghdad
-3 frantic search
-2 retraced image
-1 turnabout
-1 blue sun's zenith
+4 gush
+3 mental misstep
+1 sol ring
+1 library of alexandria
+1 regrowth
+1 imperial seal
Balance is the most powerful land destruction spell. In the past it was used with zuran orb to wipe out the opponents entire mana base, and sometimes their hand and all their creatures as well. Fortunately it was restricted and now land destruction spells are essentially never used in vintage. As such I recommend that you immediately cut all land destruction spells from this deck, including icestorm, thermokarst, and winter's grasp .
Today land destruction is done by other lands such as, strip mine, and its wearker variants: ghost quarter and wasteland. These can also be reused over again using crucible of worlds to create a hard lock and since they aren't spells they can't be countered.
Get 4 crop rotation, 4 noxious revival, and 3 ghost quarter in order to switch over towards this new style of land destruction. This shouldn't cost you more then a few dollars overall. Use crop rotation to get strip mine, and use noxious revival and regrowth to reuse it. If you don't get strip mine use your ghost quarters instead. If you can afford it buy some crucible of worlds, as they can allow you to create a hard lock. Ultimately, I think you should work towards building something like what I provided above.
Nearly half of this deck is shutdown by null rod. This is completely unacceptable. Get rid of all of your artifact lands, your diamonds / opals, and your strip mine and build a reliable mana base which includes tolarian academy.
You also shouldn't run 4 MMs MD since the only card it in can counter in certain MUD decks is sol ring. I recommend that you use merchant scroll instead. When combined with ancestral recall, merchant scroll can operate a as 1UU draw three cards spell which is more powerful then thirst for knowledge without graveyard recursion. Furthermore, add hurkyl's recall as another possible scroll target and as a means of keeping MUD decks in check.
I love burn decks, they're definitely the most fun deck to play. But, I don't think it could win against a deck that on turn 1 tinkers for darksteel colossus.
Play Standard, last I checked they have Lightning Bolt and Earthquake so burn can be very powerful in that format. In addition to this they will need 11 mana to play Darksteel Colossus in standard, unless they use Master Transmuter, which can easily be bolted, so in that regard there is no worry about Darksteel Colossus or powerful artifacts in standard.
Can I get around this with some artifact spells like ensnaring bridge?
Perhaps if you threw in lots of artifacts and Goblin Welders a R burnish deck could be playable in vintage.
My past experience with mono-red is that counter decks and white protection where extremely annoying to deal with.
Sideboard Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast if you are worried about U decks. Also there is not much worry about counterspells in standard if you decide to go that route.
The BB pretty much rules it out as an option in most decks because many decks like 5c Stax are already struggling with colored mana. In addition Mana Drain is UU and it is pretty much better then this card in every way, plus Mana Drain can be pitched to Force of Will. This card sort of reminds me of Vampire Hexmage. I cannot recall how many times I struggled with getting BB mana in Vampire Hexmage based decks.
why have i never seen anyone use these?
It can take up $20 or more, it costs BB, and it is outshined by Thoughtsieze and Duress.
there sure are a lot of good cards in another blue players hand.. imagine making them waste a tinker, or demonic tutor on a land or something, or play yawgwill with nothing in the yard.
Use Thoughtsieze, it is B and it can do most of those things just as effectively. Another thing is Thoughtsieze makes for a good first turn drop, because your opponents hand is most packed on the first turn. Word of Command on the other hand is rarely going to be dropped on the first turn.
what type of deck would be it's best home? tezz? tendrils? something else?
Definitely not a Tezzeret the Seeker based deck. Those decks are U based so they will struggle with the colored mana problem.
Tendrils of Agony, on the other hand, makes for a B deck and it often accompanies Dark Ritual, Night's Whisper, and other B cards, so I would say it would be playable in a casual Tendrils deck. Definitely only use this card in a deck that is predominately B.
Otherwise black card drawers like Ad Nauseam and Dark Confidant could be of use because they will not hurt you that much since you don't even have a Inkwell Leviathan or any high cmc card.
The biggest problem with 5c stax is pretty much that the mana base is weak. At first I used only 6 colored lands, but I got pretty annoyed when I had ancestral recall, crop rotation, or a vampiric tutor that I couldn't cast.
Barbarian Ring doesn't produce UBGW mana, so it doesn't seem to be a land which fits well into 5c stax, when you want mana of any color. Barbarian Ring is primarily good for creature removal, in which case Darkblast seems to do the job pretty well and darkblast/dredge has lots of synergies with other cards in the deck like Goblin Welder, Crucible of Worlds, Ancient Grudge, and Bazaar of Baghdad.
Another thing is I find Imperial Seal can be pretty nice in the deck (if you have enough rainbow lands) because of how it can get Trinisphere and Strip Mine. On that note this recent tournament deck looks pretty synergetic and well designed:
I'm actually testing a very simple deck with that combo.
Please don't put an x in front of each card, it is kind of confusing. I clicked on the links and I thought the magiccards.info website was down or something lol.
I don't think this combo is really competitive in tournament.
Apparently it is pretty competitive in more restrictive formats, Extended, and to a lesser extent Legacy. It just doesn't seem to be that nice in Vintage though, because you have to have 4 Vampire Hexmage and it is BB, which means you almost always need Dark Ritual as well, so you already lost eight slots there.
From an extended perspective Tarmogoyf, Duress, Thoughtsieze, Into The North, and Lightning Greaves are still available to you, so for I would stick with extended until Dark Depths are Coldnsap are no longer valid in Extended. Most of these decks I have seen could theoretically be extended decks if you got rid of all the powerful spells such as Time Walk.
Your land base sucks. You have only 5 ways of producing B, also throw in some basic lands unless you want to get totally destroyed by a stax deck with Wastelands.
Steel Hellkite: attack the opponent and pay 3 to destroy the energy flux.
Ratchet Bomb: if you can manage get three charge counters on then you can sacrifice this to destroy the energy flux.
Smokestack: sacrifice inessential artifacts to smokestack and keep your lands. Eventually the opponent may be forced to sacrifice the energy flux.
Mycosynth Lattice: this makes everything into artifacts even energy flux itself which is an even more reliable means of getting the opponent to sacrifice his/her energy flux then using smokestack.
Spine of Ish Sah: this card was already mentioned by an earlier poster. This is a great option in graveyard oriented workshop decks.
http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=1543
1 Black Lotus
2 Crucible of Worlds
4 Engineered Explosives
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Echoing Truth
4 Force of Will
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Mana Drain
2 Mental Misstep
2 Mindbreak Trap
2 Misdirection
4 Standstill
1 Steel Sabotage
1 Time Walk
2 Fire/Ice
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Faerie Conclave
2 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Mountain
1 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Strip Mine
3 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Energy Flux
4 Ingot Chewer
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Steel Sabotage
2 Underground Sea
1 Yixlid Jailer
This deck has 4 wasteland, 1 strip mine, and 2 crucible of worlds. Engineered explosives can be used to wipe out enemy moxen or to stop other threats.
Library of alexandria combos with land untappers such as mind over matter, frantic search, and candelabra of tawnos to get you the cards you need.
Regrowth allows you to reuse high tide, ancestral recall, time walk and other cards from your graveyard.
Mental misstep is basically a necessity in this deck because it can counter opposing missteps that are targeting your high tides.
Gush is really solid when most of your lands are islands and you are already running fastbond. You can also add imperial seal as an additional means of acquiring fastbond.
I would make the following modifications to put these cards to use:
-4 bazaar of baghdad
-3 frantic search
-2 retraced image
-1 turnabout
-1 blue sun's zenith
+4 gush
+3 mental misstep
+1 sol ring
+1 library of alexandria
+1 regrowth
+1 imperial seal
4 wasteland
3 crucible of worlds
1 strip mine
counterspells:
4 force of will
4 mana drain
2 mental misstep
2 mindbreak trap
2 misdirection
1 steel sabotage
1 spell pierce
4 standstil
4 noxious revival
3 jace, the mind sculptor
1 regrowth
1 fastbond
1 time walk
1 ancestral recall
1 brainstorm
1 echoing truth
1 black lotus
1 mox emerald
1 mox sapphire
1 sol ring
1 library of alexandria
6 island
4 tropical island
4 misty rainforest
Balance is the most powerful land destruction spell. In the past it was used with zuran orb to wipe out the opponents entire mana base, and sometimes their hand and all their creatures as well. Fortunately it was restricted and now land destruction spells are essentially never used in vintage. As such I recommend that you immediately cut all land destruction spells from this deck, including icestorm, thermokarst, and winter's grasp .
Today land destruction is done by other lands such as, strip mine, and its wearker variants: ghost quarter and wasteland. These can also be reused over again using crucible of worlds to create a hard lock and since they aren't spells they can't be countered.
Get 4 crop rotation, 4 noxious revival, and 3 ghost quarter in order to switch over towards this new style of land destruction. This shouldn't cost you more then a few dollars overall. Use crop rotation to get strip mine, and use noxious revival and regrowth to reuse it. If you don't get strip mine use your ghost quarters instead. If you can afford it buy some crucible of worlds, as they can allow you to create a hard lock. Ultimately, I think you should work towards building something like what I provided above.
You also shouldn't run 4 MMs MD since the only card it in can counter in certain MUD decks is sol ring. I recommend that you use merchant scroll instead. When combined with ancestral recall, merchant scroll can operate a as 1UU draw three cards spell which is more powerful then thirst for knowledge without graveyard recursion. Furthermore, add hurkyl's recall as another possible scroll target and as a means of keeping MUD decks in check.
I would add Yawgmoth's Will, it pretty much make the cards in your deck twice as powerful. I would also probably add Mox Jet, Mox Sapphire, Mox Ruby, Lotus Petal, Mana Crypt, Necropotence, and Yawgmoth's Bargain into the mix. If you get Yawgmoth's Bargain into play then you can almost certainly get a first-turn win. In addition, you might as Well use Night's Whisper instead of Sign in Blood.
It would be the best card ever printed. A single card channel-fireball? That would be sure as hell be banned.
Play Standard, last I checked they have Lightning Bolt and Earthquake so burn can be very powerful in that format. In addition to this they will need 11 mana to play Darksteel Colossus in standard, unless they use Master Transmuter, which can easily be bolted, so in that regard there is no worry about Darksteel Colossus or powerful artifacts in standard.
Perhaps if you threw in lots of artifacts and Goblin Welders a R burnish deck could be playable in vintage.
Sideboard Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast if you are worried about U decks. Also there is not much worry about counterspells in standard if you decide to go that route.
It can take up $20 or more, it costs BB, and it is outshined by Thoughtsieze and Duress.
Use Thoughtsieze, it is B and it can do most of those things just as effectively. Another thing is Thoughtsieze makes for a good first turn drop, because your opponents hand is most packed on the first turn. Word of Command on the other hand is rarely going to be dropped on the first turn.
Definitely not a Tezzeret the Seeker based deck. Those decks are U based so they will struggle with the colored mana problem.
Tendrils of Agony, on the other hand, makes for a B deck and it often accompanies Dark Ritual, Night's Whisper, and other B cards, so I would say it would be playable in a casual Tendrils deck. Definitely only use this card in a deck that is predominately B.
http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=13382
If you do want to go the way of Artificer's Intuition you will probably have to add Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, and a whole slew of blue cards, oh and you might as well add Time Vault/Voltaic Key in that case as well.
Otherwise black card drawers like Ad Nauseam and Dark Confidant could be of use because they will not hurt you that much since you don't even have a Inkwell Leviathan or any high cmc card.
I would probably change:
-1 Barbarian Ring
-1 Something?
+2 City of Brass
The biggest problem with 5c stax is pretty much that the mana base is weak. At first I used only 6 colored lands, but I got pretty annoyed when I had ancestral recall, crop rotation, or a vampiric tutor that I couldn't cast.
Barbarian Ring doesn't produce UBGW mana, so it doesn't seem to be a land which fits well into 5c stax, when you want mana of any color. Barbarian Ring is primarily good for creature removal, in which case Darkblast seems to do the job pretty well and darkblast/dredge has lots of synergies with other cards in the deck like Goblin Welder, Crucible of Worlds, Ancient Grudge, and Bazaar of Baghdad.
Another thing is I find Imperial Seal can be pretty nice in the deck (if you have enough rainbow lands) because of how it can get Trinisphere and Strip Mine. On that note this recent tournament deck looks pretty synergetic and well designed:
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=29553
Although I really don't understand the point of running Undiscovered Paradise??
Please don't put an x in front of each card, it is kind of confusing. I clicked on the links and I thought the magiccards.info website was down or something lol.
Apparently it is pretty competitive in more restrictive formats, Extended, and to a lesser extent Legacy. It just doesn't seem to be that nice in Vintage though, because you have to have 4 Vampire Hexmage and it is BB, which means you almost always need Dark Ritual as well, so you already lost eight slots there.
From an extended perspective Tarmogoyf, Duress, Thoughtsieze, Into The North, and Lightning Greaves are still available to you, so for I would stick with extended until Dark Depths are Coldnsap are no longer valid in Extended. Most of these decks I have seen could theoretically be extended decks if you got rid of all the powerful spells such as Time Walk.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=193002
Vitality Charm can also be pretty nice to regenerate things, so it might be better then Primal Bellow.
Also no Wirewood Savage??
Changes:
-4 City of Traitors (What is this doing here? This isn't a MUD deck. You need UB)
+4 Polluted Delta (You need ways to produce B)
-3 Tolarian Academy (Illegal)
+3 Flooded Strand
-1 Vault of Whispers (don't use lands that get shut down by Null Rod)
+1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
-1 Academy Ruins (What is this even doing here?)
+1 Library of Alexandria
-3 Seat of Synod (This gets owned by Null Rod)
+2 Island (Protect yourself from Wastelands)
+1 Swamp
Spells:
-2 Defense Grid (WTF? Defense Grid in a deck with Force of Will? Seriously don't use this card.)
+1 Cunning Wish
+1 Imperial Seal
-4 Tolarian Winds (This is good in a deck that has a lot of graveyard recursion)
+4 Duress (This is a much better card then Defense Grid)
-1 Candelebra of Tawnos (Sorry, you cannot use 4 Tolarian Academies with this)
+1 Memory Jar
-1 Serum Powder
+1 Yawgmoth's Will (It seems you are missing the best thing since sliced bread)
Creatures:
-1 Ambasador Laquatas
+1 Inkwell Leviathan
2 Metalworker
1 Inkwell Leviathan
Instants (11):
4 Cunning Wish
3 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
Sorceries (14):
4 Duress
4 Time Warp
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Timetwister
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Lotus Petal
4 Panoptic Mirror
1 Memory Jar
Lands (17):
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
3 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Ravenous Trap
1 Whiplash Trap
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Needlebite Trap
1 Extirpate
1 Spell Pierce
1 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
1 Pact of Negation
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Contagion
1 Darkblast
I recommend you check out Extended. You can use Panoptic Mirror + Time Warp there.
3 Iona, Shield of Emeria
Token Generators (11):
4 Goblin Assault
4 Dragon Fodder
3 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Sorceries (11):
4 Polymorph
4 Earthquake
3 Day of Judgement
4 Path To Exile
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Burst Lightning
Lands (23):
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Arid Mesa
4 Glacial Fortress
4 island
4 mountain
3 plains
+1 Sadistic Sacrament (Might as have four of these)
-4 Duress (You already have 4 of these in your sideboard?)
+1 Mox Emerald
+1 Mox Ruby
+1 Mox Peral
+1 Mana Crypt
Perhaps Jester's Cap has a place in here as well? It is basically a colorless Sadistic Sacrament.
Also about the sideboard:
Diabolic Edict > Cruel Edict
Ravenous Trap > Tormod's Crypt (When you have black mana)