The core of my list revolves around my preferred control play, my format is pretty creature based, not a lot of unfair decks in my local stores. Though I dunno what'll happen post Eldrazi now, time will tell.
Anyones, the core of the deck involves running a LOT of boardwipes, 5-6. I have 5 at the moment and it works well with all the gas the deck has.
The other half involves running a multitude of animating permenants. Azorius Keyrune is actually one of my fav items in the deck. I have had many game 2s where my opponent slaps down a T3 blood moon and I shrug and put down azorius keyrune and they realise they aren't winning the race.
In total I run about 11 animating permanents, each serving different roles. Gideon is a great anti-aggro house, and he closes the game hard and fast. Collonade is great, we all know why.
Keyrune helps smooth my curve, kills my opponent (a flying 2/2 that is immune to sorcery speed removal is a big threat in this deck), and makes me immune to blood moons.
Myth Realised is a beast, and it generally soaks up any early removal right away, forcing my opponent to play the game on my terms and when they finally can afford to drop their own threats, I have the mana to deny anything they do. T1 Myth is gross. Its a pretty solid mana sink, so my opponent is forced to take action, since if they pass turn I keep gaining on them. It also just plays well into the general draw-go gameplan.
Finally, Gifts of course adds that potent inevitability that can just happen suddenly. T4 board wipe and T5 gifts package is absolutely brutal.
Finally, going the animating permanent route combos well with Elesh Norn. All my little keyrunes and friends suddenly turn into very scary 4/4 fliers. Often gifts is lethal in one swing, since elesh norn + a single animated permanent will generally take out half my opponents life, and if I was poking them earlier, they're now dead.
Id like to put 2 thoughtseize + 2 inquisition in the MB, but Im not sure what to cut.
Probably way too durdly, but Day's Undoing refills your hand while after a few extractions your opponent won't get anything useful. It's also a shuffle effect.
Thats... actually not bad. Though I think with the addition now of being able to run Ancestral Visions I think it will fit in the 'refill our hand' slot quite well.
But Day's Undoing actually seems pretty good. Refilling our hand up with it mid game after several extractions does seem like our opponent will probably just draw a dead hand...
I'm really tempted to find a way to ramp into the kicker on Sadistic Sacrament. Might mean going green as well but ripping out 15 cards as fast you can along side other disruption might just leave your opponent on dead/land draws.
Not really that necessary.
After even 2-3 extractions the opponents odds of drawing threats goes way down.
Before any extractions, they have about a 33% chance of drawing a threat each draw.
After each extraction, the odds drop as follows:
1: 26.7%
2: 20%
3: 13.3%
4: 6.7%
5: Aprox 0%
6: They should now be officially dead
After just three extractions they're pretty much dead in the water and you'll just naturally have so much gas compared to them. Every turn they'll draw-go and you can just walk all over them, much like top control.
If you stick psychic surgery around this time, they will just have dead draws all game, its the principle of the deck.
As for Vortex Elemental, we want the opponent's threats in their GY for extractions, not shuffled back into their deck. Extractions are strong not because they trigger psychic surgery (thats just an added bonus)
The extractions are strong because they are literally our win con. I'd much rather run creatures that kill opponents creatures over vortex elemental.
The only 'ramp' I can see being really applicable in this deck is Sideboard Oblivion sower in against tron and swapping game plans.
Vs Tron we want to hit their lands instead. T1 ghost quarter their tron land and extract it. Repeatedly extract their nonbasics so they get super mana screwed, then drop an oblivion sower and GG.
Even if oblivion sower eats removal, we just ramped so hard we can easily drop kicked sacraments now, and that'll end the game right there.
I'd also recommend running Dead Drop over Barter in Blood, we can pretty easily fuel the delve cost in this deck methinks, but that plan doesnt play well with delirium.
You need a true finisher in the deck for paper magic.
Without it, an opponent can pseudo slow play you out of time by taking each of their turns manually. You can call a judge but at FNM tier they prolly wont get in much trouble.
Having something like Jace, Ashiok, or Drownyard prevents this issue from cropping up.
Not necessary on mtgo. Once you hit end game you just hold down f6 and thats it.
We need to reliably destroy a lot of permanents in order for bitter ordeal to be a better version of Sacrament.
I think Sacrament is just strictly better than ordeal, since ordeal will pretty often only hit 3-4 cards just like sacrament, but end game wise sacrament can be kicked to finish the game instantly.
Creeping tar pit falls into the same trap as jace. Due to Psychic Surgery's power, the opponent is going to have a fist full of removal spells. Since we are running normally only 4 creatures, they'll eat removal asap. The principle of the deck is the fact that by not running creatures, we can let our opponent keep removal spells on psychic surgery flips and they'll be more dead draws for the opponent.
Our goal is for them to have like 20 cards left in their deck and a hand full of removal/counter spells that dont do anything, and all their draws are more dead removal/counterspells and they lose by default.
If our win con is a creature it /will/ die asap.
I think it'd be better to run a win con that doesnt die to most removal.
God what I'd do for a JTMS in this deck :x
As for psychic surgery, its a 4 of in my opinion though. Its effect stacks, having two surgeries out at once pretty much wins you the game.
The total list of win cons is as follows, and due to the nature of the deck I feel like the first thing we want to do is debate what wincon is the strongest.
#1: Nephalia Drownyard I like this card because its a mana dump on turns you dont do anything, forcing your opponent to do stuff because stalling isn't an option. It is a constant hovering clock ticking on their head and it puts pressure on them constantly, which puts them in an awkward position.
#2: Sadistic Sacrament I do enjoy this card since it lets us snipe their singleton cards, which is nice, but I feel like it held more value against decks like pod back in the day that ran a lot of singletons. Most decks today run all their threats as 4 ofs, which negates Sacraments big point.
#3: Jace, Vryn's Prodigy: The awkward part about jace is he's a creature, and due to the nature of the deck the opponent is going to have a fistful of removal cards ready to blow on jace, making him a meh play in my opinion. If you CAN flip him though, hes a WAY harder clock than drownyard. Thats a mighty big if though. Maybe SB material against removal light decks where he can survive long enough to flip?
Edit: On the flipside, post SOI killing jace is not always a good idea for the opponent, since doing so turns on our Delirium mode which makes us bonkers. I think I would run 4 jace, 4 snapcaster, and 3 Lillianas in the delirium version of the deck. All three are normal board threats and our opponent is in the awkward position of 'if I dont kill this I will regret it, but if I do kill it my opponents delirium engages...'
#4: Ashiok, the Nightmare Weaver As great as Ashiok is, I find their mill effect to just end up being a more awkward version of Drownyard that uses up precious deck slots. Drownyard just does the job better (read: instant speed and a LOT harder to remove) and it uses up land slots instead of spell slots, and it cant be countered and doesnt die to abrupt decay and etc.
No love for ashiok? seems like she would fit pretty well along side giving you another out
I think Id prefer Jace over Ashiok. One mana less and he protects us against aggro when he flips, whereas ashiok seems a bit too squishy in a deck like ours that has little defensive power.
I will preface this by stating this deck operates a lot like four horseman. In a normal sanctioned paper tournament that is full of cut throat players, a player who knows their rules well can force a tie against this deck under the right circumstances. Be warned that this deck folds to greasy opponents who whine to a judge and slow play.
Let's go over the core of the deck:
The core of this deck relies on a weakness most modern decks possess: they only run a small density of true threats that actually win the game.
Furthermore we 'blank' all the other cards in their deck by the fact we run no true threats of our own. Aside from a few snapcasters (whos role is to simply allow us to flashback our surgery effects, we dont really care if he dies), their removal spells are all blanked.
The only deck this doesn't apply to is true burn, which runs significantly higher threat density compared to most other decks, making it our worst matchup. Which means if you are expecting burn to be all over the place in your meta, this deck isn't for you. This deck preys on combo decks and midrange decks like delver that only run approximately 20~24 threats in their deck tops.
What defines a threat?
Threats are cards that actively win the game. These consist of win con pieces of combo decks (like splinter twin + deceiver exarch)
This also includes any card that will kill you. Creatures, lightning bolt, etc etc.
The goal of Psychic surgery is to use cards like Surgical extraction and Extirpate to remove all threats from an opponents deck. At which point during a 'surgery' you can reveal to the opponent they have no win cons left and lose by default.
Further augmenting this we constantly will trigger Psychic Surgery, which lets us snipe cards off the top of our opponents deck Top Control style. The goal is to make the opponent constantly draw dead cards and durdle while we rip their deck apart.
Our Achilles' Heel
At this part when we enter our end game, our opponent has two choices:
-Continue playing the game they have lost and stall out the clock (a douche move but semi legal in tourneys as long as they dont slow play)
-Concede and move on to the next game and try to win game 2 and 3. (the smart choice if they are a good player, not everyone will make this choice though)
Handling this weakness
At the end game we need a final finisher, a card that will wipe the last bit of our opponents deck out quickly and prevent them from slow playing. Drownyard is a great finisher that we can reliably run a few copies of in the deck that can early game be employed as a mana sink on turns the opponent does nothing, and also quickly closes out the end game when the opponent refuses to concede.
The Namesake
So, why Psychic Surgery? This card is BONKERS in modern with all the fetch lands being run. Between it and all the search spells in modern at the moment, its pretty common to get a trigger every turn. This card lets us grind a lot along the lines of top control. What separates us from top control then?
Top control mills the opponent, which is actually a big weakness. A fair few of modern decks enjoy their library being filled up, which means to top control enables their threats (delve spells, snapcaster mage, tasigur and friends, etc etc).
Psychic surgery and our other tools exile instead of mill, which means we bypass all of these problems. In fact we have a LOT of mainboard hate against snapcaster mage and friends. In fact, these very decks are exactly what Psychic Surgery is tailored for. If your meta is chock full of delver matchups, Psychic Surgery is for you!
Surgeries
These are the total list of cards that I refer to as surgeries. They cause the opponent to shuffle their deck.
Ghost Quarters: This is a pretty mandatory mainboard card. Manlands are always a pain to deal with, and most of our surgeries can snipe non-basic lands from the graveyard. Manlands count as threats too, and they need to be taken out! If the opponent is smart and doesnt give us the fetch and shuffle off quarters to trigger surgery, then we are now running wastelands. They lose either way.
Surgical Extraction: Probably our strongest surgery. The opponent can never safely assume we dont have it ready to go even when tapped out.
Extirpate: Our other powerhouse, the split second on this card is great for sniping a shockland and manascrewing our opponent early game off a ghost quarter. They also can't respond to extirpate by snapcastering the target.
Path to Exile: Its tempting to splash white for this card. Probably the best removal spell in the format, it becomes even stronger when it triggers psychic surgery as well.
Infinite Obliteration: This card is pretty powerful and adds more consistency to the deck. Our other surgeries require the opponent to have the card in their graveyard already, this card lets us pre-emptively snipe threats that haven't surfaced yet. Remember! You get to search their library off other surgeries, so you need to take notes of every threat they have in their deck, even ones you can't hit yet, explicitly for sniping off obliteration.
Sadistic Sacrament
The alternative to Infinite Obliteration, sacrament only hits three cards instead of four, but it can hit all card types including manlands. Obliteration often will only be able to hit two to three cards anyways, so Sacrament is a stronger version. Sacrament also doubles as an abrupt game ender late game when you kick it, which means you don't need to run as many drownyards. Instead you want to run filter lands to easily hit the triple black costs safely.
Pick the Brain: This card is coming out shortly in SOI and adds a lot of ammunition to the deck. Early game control spells that double as surgeries late game are pretty potent.
Invasive Surgery: Another powerful card arriving with SOI, this might just be the final puzzle piece Psychic Surgery needed to be a truly consistent deck to handle Tier one decks. Time will tell!
Example Decklists
The first decklist employs the drownyard plan, which means running Infinite Obliteration over Sadistic Sacrament.
The other version runs 4 sadistic sacrament, which means less reliance on needing to memorize the opponents deck. However due to the heavy black mana requirement its probably not a good idea to splash white for Path unless you wanna go deep.
Just play it on MTGO
To note, the achilles' heel of this deck does NOT apply to MTGO. In fact, it can often win you the round without winning the game. I have a from time to time won the entire round because the opponent didn't understand what happened game one and never bothered conceding. They timed out game one and I won the round on a 0-0.
So it can happen and the deck truly shines here. Once you enter end game just hold down F6 and watch the salt roll in.
Post SOI changes
Now, for the discussion: Pick the Brain and Invasive Surgery are VERY good cards for the deck, but they require delirium to be active. We can currently hit 3/4 delirium very reliably with ghost quarters, fetch lands, and a multitude of instants and sorceries.
To hit delirium however we need either an enchantment, planeswalker, or creature in our graveyard.
I feel the best method to achieve this is using Liliana of the Veil, Snapcaster Mage, Psychic Surgery, and perhaps one more card that will act as an anti-aggro deterrent as well as hitting delirium.
Perhaps a creature we can use as a chump blocker and life gain? Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is also a pretty powerful piece in the deck and can act as our primary finisher.
Merfolk is currently what I have sleeved up, but I am finding monoblue martyr is even more powerful since it has 4 flusterstorms mainboarded on top of 4 forces and 4 dazes, and all of our creatures are annoying for unfair decks to deal with.
I actually was thinking stax would be a fun deck to play, I enjoy it.
How does U/W miracles (no red splash) do in such a meta compared to fish? I feel like miracles is a pretty solid deck. I do have some mindsculptors and most of the other random tools to build the deck, so Id just need to buy a couple tundras and wastelands and Im good.
So I have a solid Fish deck and also a solid monoblue martyr deck at the moment.
I have about a grand of extra cash flow about to come in and Im thinking its time to invest in some dual lands and wastelands to take my legacy game up to the next level.
My meta is pretty much entirely unfair decks. Storm and dredge and other such combo decks.
I have all the main money cards in blue I can think of, and plenty of fetchlands in a variety of colors. I do not have goyfs though.
I have a fully pimped out modern UB fae deck though.
Whats a good legacy deck that is well positioned against combo decks atm?
Is monoblue martyr good enough?
Whats our thoughts on maybe a UB fae deck in legacy? I do love me some faeries
The key is understanding Mind twist isnt JUST +1~2 CA.
There is a HUGE difference in CA of being +1 ca 7 to 6, vs +1 CA 1 to 0.
Thats the key there. +1 CA is not the same as -1 CA to the opponent. Drawing a card is NOT the same as making an opponent discard a card!
If you have no cards in hand and your opponent has no cards in hand, the deck designed to top deck better will win.
So decks that employ stuff like Mind Twist are designed to stay ahead when they get ahead. Its the same principle as to why JTMS is banned in modern.
Its not a matter of just being broken. its a matter of 'once I get ahead, you can't ever catch up!'
Once you mind twist an opponent in a deck built to mind twist, they lose the game most of the time, since your goal is mind twist them once and then never let them do anything after that.
Never compare +1 CA for you to -1 CA to opponent, its not comparable.
I prefer just running the far superior Delver over Thing in the Ice.
Also when it flips itd bounce our own board back to our hands, no thanks :x
Delver does it better. It flips almost instantly in our deck, taps for hussar, and can apply early pressure to force opponent to play by our rules and puts a clock on combo decks.
Thing in the ice just sits there for awhile before flipping and messing our own board up :x
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Planeswalkers [3]
1 Gideon Jura
2 Liliana of the Veil
Spells [31]
1 Unburial Rites
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Azorius Keyrune
4 Myth Realized
3 Remand
2 Cryptic Command
1 Dismember
3 Path to Exile
1 Wrath of God
2 Supreme Verdict
1 Damnation
1 Day of Judgment
2 Celestial Colonnade
1 Fetid Heath
3 Flooded Strand
1 Godless Shrine
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Island
2 Marsh Flats
1 Mystic Gate
1 Plains
3 Polluted Delta
1 Sunken Ruins
2 Swamp
3 Tectonic Edge
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Watery Grave
The core of my list revolves around my preferred control play, my format is pretty creature based, not a lot of unfair decks in my local stores. Though I dunno what'll happen post Eldrazi now, time will tell.
Anyones, the core of the deck involves running a LOT of boardwipes, 5-6. I have 5 at the moment and it works well with all the gas the deck has.
The other half involves running a multitude of animating permenants. Azorius Keyrune is actually one of my fav items in the deck. I have had many game 2s where my opponent slaps down a T3 blood moon and I shrug and put down azorius keyrune and they realise they aren't winning the race.
In total I run about 11 animating permanents, each serving different roles. Gideon is a great anti-aggro house, and he closes the game hard and fast. Collonade is great, we all know why.
Keyrune helps smooth my curve, kills my opponent (a flying 2/2 that is immune to sorcery speed removal is a big threat in this deck), and makes me immune to blood moons.
Myth Realised is a beast, and it generally soaks up any early removal right away, forcing my opponent to play the game on my terms and when they finally can afford to drop their own threats, I have the mana to deny anything they do. T1 Myth is gross. Its a pretty solid mana sink, so my opponent is forced to take action, since if they pass turn I keep gaining on them. It also just plays well into the general draw-go gameplan.
Finally, Gifts of course adds that potent inevitability that can just happen suddenly. T4 board wipe and T5 gifts package is absolutely brutal.
Finally, going the animating permanent route combos well with Elesh Norn. All my little keyrunes and friends suddenly turn into very scary 4/4 fliers. Often gifts is lethal in one swing, since elesh norn + a single animated permanent will generally take out half my opponents life, and if I was poking them earlier, they're now dead.
Id like to put 2 thoughtseize + 2 inquisition in the MB, but Im not sure what to cut.
Thats... actually not bad. Though I think with the addition now of being able to run Ancestral Visions I think it will fit in the 'refill our hand' slot quite well.
But Day's Undoing actually seems pretty good. Refilling our hand up with it mid game after several extractions does seem like our opponent will probably just draw a dead hand...
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Jace, Vryn's PRodigy
2 Fleshbag Marauder
Planeswalkers: 3
3 Liliana of the Veil
Enchantments: 4
4 Psychic Surgery
Spells: 21
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Extirpate
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Damnation
1 Sadistic Sacrament
2 Devour Flesh
3 invasive surgery
4 ghost quarters
4 Polluted Delta
2 flooded strand
4 watery grave
1 island
1 swamp
4 darkslick shores
2 drowned catacombs
2 Nephalia Drownyard
Not really that necessary.
After even 2-3 extractions the opponents odds of drawing threats goes way down.
Before any extractions, they have about a 33% chance of drawing a threat each draw.
After each extraction, the odds drop as follows:
1: 26.7%
2: 20%
3: 13.3%
4: 6.7%
5: Aprox 0%
6: They should now be officially dead
After just three extractions they're pretty much dead in the water and you'll just naturally have so much gas compared to them. Every turn they'll draw-go and you can just walk all over them, much like top control.
If you stick psychic surgery around this time, they will just have dead draws all game, its the principle of the deck.
As for Vortex Elemental, we want the opponent's threats in their GY for extractions, not shuffled back into their deck. Extractions are strong not because they trigger psychic surgery (thats just an added bonus)
The extractions are strong because they are literally our win con. I'd much rather run creatures that kill opponents creatures over vortex elemental.
The only 'ramp' I can see being really applicable in this deck is Sideboard Oblivion sower in against tron and swapping game plans.
Vs Tron we want to hit their lands instead. T1 ghost quarter their tron land and extract it. Repeatedly extract their nonbasics so they get super mana screwed, then drop an oblivion sower and GG.
Even if oblivion sower eats removal, we just ramped so hard we can easily drop kicked sacraments now, and that'll end the game right there.
I like your list a lot.
Another potential enabler for delirium is Fleshbag Marauder
I'd also recommend running Dead Drop over Barter in Blood, we can pretty easily fuel the delve cost in this deck methinks, but that plan doesnt play well with delirium.
I like Spell Snare a lot.
Without it, an opponent can pseudo slow play you out of time by taking each of their turns manually. You can call a judge but at FNM tier they prolly wont get in much trouble.
Having something like Jace, Ashiok, or Drownyard prevents this issue from cropping up.
Not necessary on mtgo. Once you hit end game you just hold down f6 and thats it.
We need to reliably destroy a lot of permanents in order for bitter ordeal to be a better version of Sacrament.
I think Sacrament is just strictly better than ordeal, since ordeal will pretty often only hit 3-4 cards just like sacrament, but end game wise sacrament can be kicked to finish the game instantly.
Our goal is for them to have like 20 cards left in their deck and a hand full of removal/counter spells that dont do anything, and all their draws are more dead removal/counterspells and they lose by default.
If our win con is a creature it /will/ die asap.
I think it'd be better to run a win con that doesnt die to most removal.
God what I'd do for a JTMS in this deck :x
As for psychic surgery, its a 4 of in my opinion though. Its effect stacks, having two surgeries out at once pretty much wins you the game.
#1: Nephalia Drownyard I like this card because its a mana dump on turns you dont do anything, forcing your opponent to do stuff because stalling isn't an option. It is a constant hovering clock ticking on their head and it puts pressure on them constantly, which puts them in an awkward position.
#2: Sadistic Sacrament I do enjoy this card since it lets us snipe their singleton cards, which is nice, but I feel like it held more value against decks like pod back in the day that ran a lot of singletons. Most decks today run all their threats as 4 ofs, which negates Sacraments big point.
#3: Jace, Vryn's Prodigy: The awkward part about jace is he's a creature, and due to the nature of the deck the opponent is going to have a fistful of removal cards ready to blow on jace, making him a meh play in my opinion. If you CAN flip him though, hes a WAY harder clock than drownyard. Thats a mighty big if though. Maybe SB material against removal light decks where he can survive long enough to flip?
Edit: On the flipside, post SOI killing jace is not always a good idea for the opponent, since doing so turns on our Delirium mode which makes us bonkers. I think I would run 4 jace, 4 snapcaster, and 3 Lillianas in the delirium version of the deck. All three are normal board threats and our opponent is in the awkward position of 'if I dont kill this I will regret it, but if I do kill it my opponents delirium engages...'
#4: Ashiok, the Nightmare Weaver As great as Ashiok is, I find their mill effect to just end up being a more awkward version of Drownyard that uses up precious deck slots. Drownyard just does the job better (read: instant speed and a LOT harder to remove) and it uses up land slots instead of spell slots, and it cant be countered and doesnt die to abrupt decay and etc.
Lets hear your thoughts on it.
I think Id prefer Jace over Ashiok. One mana less and he protects us against aggro when he flips, whereas ashiok seems a bit too squishy in a deck like ours that has little defensive power.
Let's go over the core of the deck:
The core of this deck relies on a weakness most modern decks possess: they only run a small density of true threats that actually win the game.
Furthermore we 'blank' all the other cards in their deck by the fact we run no true threats of our own. Aside from a few snapcasters (whos role is to simply allow us to flashback our surgery effects, we dont really care if he dies), their removal spells are all blanked.
The only deck this doesn't apply to is true burn, which runs significantly higher threat density compared to most other decks, making it our worst matchup. Which means if you are expecting burn to be all over the place in your meta, this deck isn't for you. This deck preys on combo decks and midrange decks like delver that only run approximately 20~24 threats in their deck tops.
What defines a threat?
Threats are cards that actively win the game. These consist of win con pieces of combo decks (like splinter twin + deceiver exarch)
This also includes any card that will kill you. Creatures, lightning bolt, etc etc.
The goal of Psychic surgery is to use cards like Surgical extraction and Extirpate to remove all threats from an opponents deck. At which point during a 'surgery' you can reveal to the opponent they have no win cons left and lose by default.
Further augmenting this we constantly will trigger Psychic Surgery, which lets us snipe cards off the top of our opponents deck Top Control style. The goal is to make the opponent constantly draw dead cards and durdle while we rip their deck apart.
Our Achilles' Heel
At this part when we enter our end game, our opponent has two choices:
-Continue playing the game they have lost and stall out the clock (a douche move but semi legal in tourneys as long as they dont slow play)
-Concede and move on to the next game and try to win game 2 and 3. (the smart choice if they are a good player, not everyone will make this choice though)
Handling this weakness
At the end game we need a final finisher, a card that will wipe the last bit of our opponents deck out quickly and prevent them from slow playing. Drownyard is a great finisher that we can reliably run a few copies of in the deck that can early game be employed as a mana sink on turns the opponent does nothing, and also quickly closes out the end game when the opponent refuses to concede.
The Namesake
So, why Psychic Surgery? This card is BONKERS in modern with all the fetch lands being run. Between it and all the search spells in modern at the moment, its pretty common to get a trigger every turn. This card lets us grind a lot along the lines of top control. What separates us from top control then?
Top control mills the opponent, which is actually a big weakness. A fair few of modern decks enjoy their library being filled up, which means to top control enables their threats (delve spells, snapcaster mage, tasigur and friends, etc etc).
Psychic surgery and our other tools exile instead of mill, which means we bypass all of these problems. In fact we have a LOT of mainboard hate against snapcaster mage and friends. In fact, these very decks are exactly what Psychic Surgery is tailored for. If your meta is chock full of delver matchups, Psychic Surgery is for you!
Surgeries
These are the total list of cards that I refer to as surgeries. They cause the opponent to shuffle their deck.
Ghost Quarters: This is a pretty mandatory mainboard card. Manlands are always a pain to deal with, and most of our surgeries can snipe non-basic lands from the graveyard. Manlands count as threats too, and they need to be taken out! If the opponent is smart and doesnt give us the fetch and shuffle off quarters to trigger surgery, then we are now running wastelands. They lose either way.
Surgical Extraction: Probably our strongest surgery. The opponent can never safely assume we dont have it ready to go even when tapped out.
Extirpate: Our other powerhouse, the split second on this card is great for sniping a shockland and manascrewing our opponent early game off a ghost quarter. They also can't respond to extirpate by snapcastering the target.
Path to Exile: Its tempting to splash white for this card. Probably the best removal spell in the format, it becomes even stronger when it triggers psychic surgery as well.
Infinite Obliteration: This card is pretty powerful and adds more consistency to the deck. Our other surgeries require the opponent to have the card in their graveyard already, this card lets us pre-emptively snipe threats that haven't surfaced yet. Remember! You get to search their library off other surgeries, so you need to take notes of every threat they have in their deck, even ones you can't hit yet, explicitly for sniping off obliteration.
Sadistic Sacrament
The alternative to Infinite Obliteration, sacrament only hits three cards instead of four, but it can hit all card types including manlands. Obliteration often will only be able to hit two to three cards anyways, so Sacrament is a stronger version. Sacrament also doubles as an abrupt game ender late game when you kick it, which means you don't need to run as many drownyards. Instead you want to run filter lands to easily hit the triple black costs safely.
Pick the Brain: This card is coming out shortly in SOI and adds a lot of ammunition to the deck. Early game control spells that double as surgeries late game are pretty potent.
Invasive Surgery: Another powerful card arriving with SOI, this might just be the final puzzle piece Psychic Surgery needed to be a truly consistent deck to handle Tier one decks. Time will tell!
Example Decklists
The first decklist employs the drownyard plan, which means running Infinite Obliteration over Sadistic Sacrament.
3 Snapcaster Mage
Enchantments: 4
4 Psychic Surgery
Surgeries: 10
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Extirpate
2 Infinite Obliteration
Control Spells: 19
4 Remand
1 Damnation
2 Drown in Sorrow
3 Cryptic Command
3 Devour Flesh
3 Path to Exile
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Nephalia Drownyard
3 Ghost Quarters
4 Polluted Delta
4 flooded strand
3 watery grave
2 hallowed fountain
1 godless shrine
2 swamp
2 island
1 plains
The other version runs 4 sadistic sacrament, which means less reliance on needing to memorize the opponents deck. However due to the heavy black mana requirement its probably not a good idea to splash white for Path unless you wanna go deep.
2 Snapcaster Mage
Enchantments: 4
4 Psychic Surgery
Surgeries: 12
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Extirpate
4 sadistic sacrament
Control Spells: 18
4 Remand
3 Drown in Sorrow
2 Cryptic Command
4 Devour Flesh
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 ghost quarters
4 Polluted Delta
2 flooded strand
4 watery grave
2 island
2 swamp
4 darkslick shores
2 drowned catacombs
Just play it on MTGO
To note, the achilles' heel of this deck does NOT apply to MTGO. In fact, it can often win you the round without winning the game. I have a from time to time won the entire round because the opponent didn't understand what happened game one and never bothered conceding. They timed out game one and I won the round on a 0-0.
So it can happen and the deck truly shines here. Once you enter end game just hold down F6 and watch the salt roll in.
Post SOI changes
Now, for the discussion: Pick the Brain and Invasive Surgery are VERY good cards for the deck, but they require delirium to be active. We can currently hit 3/4 delirium very reliably with ghost quarters, fetch lands, and a multitude of instants and sorceries.
To hit delirium however we need either an enchantment, planeswalker, or creature in our graveyard.
I feel the best method to achieve this is using Liliana of the Veil, Snapcaster Mage, Psychic Surgery, and perhaps one more card that will act as an anti-aggro deterrent as well as hitting delirium.
Perhaps a creature we can use as a chump blocker and life gain? Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is also a pretty powerful piece in the deck and can act as our primary finisher.
I actually was thinking stax would be a fun deck to play, I enjoy it.
How does U/W miracles (no red splash) do in such a meta compared to fish? I feel like miracles is a pretty solid deck. I do have some mindsculptors and most of the other random tools to build the deck, so Id just need to buy a couple tundras and wastelands and Im good.
I have about a grand of extra cash flow about to come in and Im thinking its time to invest in some dual lands and wastelands to take my legacy game up to the next level.
My meta is pretty much entirely unfair decks. Storm and dredge and other such combo decks.
I have all the main money cards in blue I can think of, and plenty of fetchlands in a variety of colors. I do not have goyfs though.
I have a fully pimped out modern UB fae deck though.
Whats a good legacy deck that is well positioned against combo decks atm?
Is monoblue martyr good enough?
Whats our thoughts on maybe a UB fae deck in legacy? I do love me some faeries
Anything that comes off the reserve list gets unbanned.
Then play it like crazy and get it to a level where stores actually do events for it.
Eventually wizards would be forced to acknowledge it!
There is a HUGE difference in CA of being +1 ca 7 to 6, vs +1 CA 1 to 0.
Thats the key there. +1 CA is not the same as -1 CA to the opponent. Drawing a card is NOT the same as making an opponent discard a card!
If you have no cards in hand and your opponent has no cards in hand, the deck designed to top deck better will win.
So decks that employ stuff like Mind Twist are designed to stay ahead when they get ahead. Its the same principle as to why JTMS is banned in modern.
Its not a matter of just being broken. its a matter of 'once I get ahead, you can't ever catch up!'
Once you mind twist an opponent in a deck built to mind twist, they lose the game most of the time, since your goal is mind twist them once and then never let them do anything after that.
Never compare +1 CA for you to -1 CA to opponent, its not comparable.
Also when it flips itd bounce our own board back to our hands, no thanks :x
Delver does it better. It flips almost instantly in our deck, taps for hussar, and can apply early pressure to force opponent to play by our rules and puts a clock on combo decks.
Thing in the ice just sits there for awhile before flipping and messing our own board up :x