Ok, apparently I need to explicit my ideas here, because some of you don't seem to get the synergy.
Spoils of the Vault : name Food Chain, exile cards from you library until you get one, hopefully exiling a Griffin along the way. For B, instant-speed, you tutor the 2 cards of your combo. And that's not good enough for you ?
Serum Powder : The card itself is pretty bad. Except it exiles your hand before your free mulligan. So you don't use it just to increase your chances of getting a Food Chain in your starting hand, you use it to have a starting hand of 8 cards or more. If your first hand has Serum Powder + Griffin, you get a free mulligan into 8 cards : the Griffin + 7 new ones. So stop comparing it to a tutor.
Is riddle smith even that good? How many artifact spells are you actually going to cast when you are going off?
That's the thing, you do cast artifacts when going off.
First, if you play him before going off, it's pretty obvious he's insane.
Now say you start going off and draw him. Generally, you start by drawing 3 or 4 cards off the first Sunrise. Then you have to play some more Stars and the like if you don't want to fizzle, because you need more draws to ensure getting a Sunrise/Revival. So if every single one of those artifacts you cast digs one more card, I assure you your risks to fizzle drop dramatically.
And to add to that, if I take my list as example, I now I play more than 20 dead cards when going off : 16 lands and 4 Lotus, to which you can add Pacts of negation (which you don't want to draw once going off, since they would have answered to the first Sunrise) and potentially some Reshapes depending on the situtation. That's more than 1/3 of the deck, which means 1 out of 3 draws if basically blank, potentially worse than blank for the Lotuses you can't tutor with Reshape anymore. Once you tried Riddlesmith, you realize you're just happy to draw anything, since what you care about is purely the card advantage, he will take care of the quality advantage.
Just because I'm new to the forum doesn't mean I'm new to the game. If it's a rules guru you want, I can take that role even if I'm not marked as one here.
116.3b The active player receives priority after a spell or ability (other than a mana ability) resolves.
116.3c If a player has priority when he or she casts a spell, activates an ability, or takes a special action, that player receives priority afterward.
116.3b states that after resolution of Unburial Rites, we get priority to have fun with our Ooze before our opponent can Bolt it.
116.3c states that after using any one of Ooze's abilities, we receive priority again, so we can respond to that ability we just activated by activating another one in response, or just the same one again.
605.3b An activated mana ability doesn't go on the stack, so it can't be targeted, countered, or otherwise responded to. Rather, it resolves immediately after it is activated. (See rule 405.6c.)
That one didn't seem to be a problem for anyone, but I just quote it to make sure. Morselhoarder's is a mana ability, so you get your mana immediately without putting the ability on the stack or passing priority.
So, with all this, here is the script of the play :
Unburial Rites resolves, we get priority.
We activate Druid's ability, pay the cost (which means placing the -1/-1 counter), and put the ability on the stack.
Thanks to rules 116.3c, we receive priority again. We use it to use Morselhoarder's mana ability, thus removing the counter.
That was a mana ability, so we still have priority. We can once again activate Druid's ability, and loop through 2 and 3 without ever passing priority to the opponent.
Once we have produced enough mana with the previous loop, as we still haven't passed priority, we activate Oona's ability and add it on top of the stack of untapping abilities from Druid.
Now, we pass priority, asking the opponent if he has answers. At that point, the lethal ability is on the stack, and even Sudden Death won't stop us from exiling his library.
Note that if you are scared of Trickbind, you can activate Oona's ability several times for a bunch of mana each, since after activating it once you get priority again, as usual. This also means that it works with Bloodrite Invoker, by stacking as many activations as you want before passing priority.
Appart from that, Orzhov Guildmage might even be a better kill than Bloodrite Invoker, since it's also easy to cast, probably a little better outside of the combo, and more importantly it doesn't target your opponent, so it gets through Leyline.
And here comes the crazy idea : I'm seriously considering cutting that creature kill slot. The idea is that you just make a billion mana of each color before your opponent gets to kill the Ooze, then recur a bunch of counterspells from your graveyard, a Gigadrowse to make sure he doesn't have answers, and then just loop for infinite Compulsive Research to make him draw his library. That still works, and running one less dead card in the deck might very well be important.
i just noticed something, the two mana abilities are used without using the stack, but the Devoted Druid's untap ability isnt a mana ability so it would would give them a change to react. and after game one they would see the combo coming. i know you still have counter magic but i jsut wanted to point that out
You actually never try to resolve Druid's ability, that's the trick. Adding the -1/-1 counter is a cost, so you pay it to put the ability on the stack, but you respond to that ability by removing the counter with Morserhoarder's ability, which is a mana ability. At that point, you still have druid's untap ability on the stack, but you keep priority and stack another untap ability, adding the counter as a cost, etc...
Thus, when you stack Oona's ability for 100, it's on top of a stack of 101 untap abilities from Druid waiting to resolve.
So no, your opponent has absolutely no chance to react if Ooze hits the table, even with split second spells.
Going off requires an Orb in play, 2 Fatestitcher's (in play or GY) and 4 lands as far as I can tell.
Exactly.
And Orb digs for Fatestitchers itself, that's why I'm calling it a 1-card combo.
Concerning maniac, there are 2 problems :
- If you reanimate it, you need 1 more Unburial Rites (the first one still needed for Ooze if you hope to have enough mana) and the Maniac himself, which means 2 slots. This would be instead of our single Oona, which is 1 slot.
- Right now, we pass priority with a lethal ability on the stack, so creature removal does nothing against the combo. With Maniac, you pass priority with the flashbacked Think Twice on the stack, at which point your opponent can blast the hell out of Maniac to stop the combo (and probably win at the same time). I think that's the most important constraint.
It's exactly as blue describes : we have infinite mana, we just need a mana sink to use it. Since Oona is correct and just 1 card, to be better we would need a single card that has the ability to kill with infinite mana instantly, from the graveyard, without passing priority (which means no sorcery), and essentially more playable than Oona outside the combo. The easiest way to do that are the mana sink creatures blue listed in his post. If anyone knows other creatures of the sort, feel free to help us.
With that in mind, Bloodrite Invoker might be better than Oona, I didn't know him. I'll note each time I draw Oona if Invoker would've been better with his 3/1 body for 2B. And maybe there is a situation where exiling the library is better than killing with infinite life loss ? Can't think of one, though.
On a more general note, the deck is really stable from what I've seen in tests. I'm pretty happy with the manabase, Loam helps a lot to keep some hands with Orb that might be short in lands. You often find your kill with Orb and not play it, just waiting for the right window with your Remands, Gigadrowse and Muddle.
And I don't know if it's worth something, but I'm having a stupid streak of winning matches on Cockatrice. ^^
One of them being the funniest game ever, winning without combo just by going turn 2 Orb, turn 3 Orb, countering stuff and milling the opponent old-style.
You tried to fill your graveyard fast, make some chumpers for aggro or going Loam-Raven's Crime against combo and control, then at some point you tap crypt for tons of mana, unearth a bunch of dudes, and win.
Bloodghast didn't make the cut because I wanted chumpblockers, killing is not a problem when you got your dredge engine going.
I'm not sure you understood Hex Parasite well. You have no way of pumping it in your deck (no permanents with counters), and even then it would cost you X regular mana to give him +X/+0, not phyrexian mana.
The combo seems pretty slow since you need 6 mana to go off (UU for Fatestitcher, 3W for Unburial Rites).
You actually need only 4 mana to combo off : unearthed Fatestichers are virtually free, since they can untap the land used to pay for them. The usual play is "Tap island, unearth fatestitcher, tap him to untap the island, tap island again, unearth second Fatestitcher, mill my library, end the loop by untapping the same island one last time".
That's the same amount of mana that's needed for Splinter Twin, except you get to use your mana on the previous turn for something else than a 2U flash dude (say, Gigadrowse ?).
Also, it's almost as vulnerable to disruption as Eggs - a single counterspell or graveyard exile means the end for you.
Except Eggs doesn't run 25 control cards, including those 4 insane Gigadrowse. And if really you played poorly and ran into a counterspell (because those decks generally don't have a clock), you can always go for Journey on Pull from Eternity to put Unburial Rites back in the graveyard. But really, I never ran into a counterspell in all my tests, and god knows people are trying to build control decks on Cockatrice...
The gravehate is a problem, yes, and it's hard to win against it. That's just a metagame call, for the moment grave-based decks are completely absent, so sideboards are light against us. If some form of Dredge comes back, or if this deck is played, it will get problematic and the deck will becoe a bad choice, yes.
Ambassador Laquatus should replace Oona. It has a lower CMC for the same effect so it can be casted T3 and you can win with it on the field.
So you can't kill anymore if your opponent has an Eldrazi in his deck (and that's a lot of decks right now), because Laquatus mills whereas Oona exiles. And Oona in hand is never a problem, you just make infinite mana with Ooze and then cast her to kill, so I don't see what you mean by "you can win with it on the field".
And honestly, ambassador is soooo bad alone, whereas Oona can steal some games against control.
Ideas Unbound or Glimpse the Unthinkable could be very powerful since you basically play the game from your graveyard.
I like Ideas Unbound, maybe I'll test it in place of Visions. They're probably better all the way, actually, I think you're right.
Glimpse, on the other hand, doesn't do anything alone. I mean, sure, it can help you hit your Fatestichers if you don't have Orb in play, but then what's the point of hitting them ? They won't do anything without Orb. ^^
The misconception here is that you don't play from your graveyard, you just use it. It's not dredge, if you empty your hand to fill your grave, then what are you going to do ? You don't run Narcomeabas, Bloodghasts or anything like that.
Laboratory Maniac could be an alternate wincon, the problem is that he has to be on the field when you go off. However, it's laughably easy to win when you combo off: just flashback a Think Twice. You'll also need less mana: UU for Fatestitchers and 2U to flashback TT.
You forgot to count the 2U to play him, which makes that plan actually more expensive.
And instead of remaining resilient to creature removal, you now lose to it (flashback Think Twice, in response your opponent path/bolt/dismembers your fragile 2/2).
Oh, and you also need him in hand too, which is probably the worst problem of all. You would need to run 4 of him to be consistent, which adds a wooping 4 dead cards to the deck. Your 1-card combo has now become a 2-card combo. ^^
I know Laboratory Maniac seems sexy, but I thought about it when he got spoiled and I'm convinced it's really a bad idea.
This deck looks like it could use some ramp. Noble Hierarch/BoP could let you combo off earlier. I wouldn't worry about drawing multiples as you can discard the extras to Ideas Unbound/Compulsive Research/Thirst for Knowledge.
Maybe I'll try some Nobles after testing Ideas Unbound. Not sure the manabase could stand it well, and you would need to drop either some draw or some protection to make some room, but I can try it.
For the moment, the results are encouraging : positive against Zoo and Affinity (Gigadrowse is MVP here, especially against affinity were you only need to tap a few beaters if he doesn't have BB for Plating).
Combo matchups are pretty correct too, except for Ascension which can also sit back and wait to activate it, especially if you help him with Orb.
Control is a joke, never lost a game against any form of it. They have no clock, you have inevitability.
Oh, and the fact that most opponents don't know how to play against this deck and fall in all the tricks is hilarious. I often play against confident opponents sitting back on their Bolt for Necrotic Ooze, who realize when you go off that they don't have a window to play it.
I'm currently trying with -1 Visions of Beyond, +1 Forest because I had a a few mana screws (never color problems, though, that's a good point), and it will be my main target for Misty rainforests post side against Blood moon. I don't like running non-blue sources with 4 Gigadrowse, but I guess 2 out of 21 is ok.
Gathan Raiders are ok I guess, never tried them in that kind of deck. The only problem may be that you want as few dead cards in your graveyard as possible, and they would be additional ones. Oh, and they would force you to empty your hand *before* the attack phase every turn, but I'm not even sure that's a problem here. Just worth noting if you decide to run Madness stuff.
Talking about Madness, the 2 good ones in modern are Dark Withering and Grave Scrabbler. But they're both really bad without Infestation in play, which adds to the inconsistency again. Potentially Big Game Hunter in the sideboard, also.
The problem with being BGr is that you don't have a kill. You would lose Unburial rites, and the potentially nice pack Haakon + Knight of the reliquary + Crib Swap + Nameless Inversion (yes, that was my kill before Unburial rites got spoiled).
I mean, 2/2 zombies are nice when they are many, but even then sometimes they're just not enough.
Anyway, I really think in a deck that runs Life from the Loam and wants to consistently get back 3 lands early with it can be BGwr. With all those fetches, a couple W and R duals seems pretty easy to add.
Oh, and for Shred Memory, the problem is it's terrible alone. If there were some grave-based decks in modern, it would probably be a playable tutor, but here it will just be a bad tutor most of the time (3 mana, heavy black, sorcery-speed... It's almost the same power level as Diabolic Tutor, 1 for polyvalence seems fairly cheap). Muddle the mixture and Tolaria West are terrible tutors, but at least they're a decent counterspell and a land, that's why they are played.
I think finding another discard outlet that does something nice seems like the most viable solution. At some point I switched colors and tried running Zombie Infestation + Magus of the bazaar, but it still wasn't good.
I'm surprised I don't see any discussion on Riddlesmith. As soon as I tried him, he ended up as a 4-of and I don't ever want him out of my 75 (yes, depending on the metagame I might consider leaving them in the sideboard).
He really brings the consistency the deck is missing : pre-combo, you can just sculpt your hand happily. In-combo, it basically draws half your deck. Sad to draw tons of lands and Lotus ? Sure, let's recycle them. You drew 2 Lotus and now your Reshapes are as good as dead ? Just discard them to Riddlesmith and put them back with Bauble.
And if they make my opponent keep his creature removal post side, I'm happy. Maybe I even sided them out. ^^
I built a deck on the same ideas some time ago, and it was honestly bad :frown:, because of that "huge, debilitating weakness" you somehow missed :
it didn't do anything, and I really mean anything, when you didn't have Infestation. You can't dig for it with Loam, you have absolutely no draw engine, and you play 14 dead cards without it online.
And the worst thing is that even if you have Infestation, it really is terrible without Loam, and once again you have absolutely no way of digging for Loam (except Loam itself :p). At least I ran some Stinkweed Imps, so I could dig more aggressively for my Loams or one of my 4 Squees, but here you have nothing.
If you really want to try and make that deck work, at least play a little more dredgers, and run some Raven's Crime.
Thanks to Innistrad, graveyard-based kills are possible again, with the new and faaaar too expensive Dread return. Still, I'm pretty happy with one of the decks I've been trying so far, so here it is :
Before describing the combo, I really want to note that the deck is a control-combo, which means its gameplay is very similar to the one of Splinter Twins : you have a combo finish, inside a rather important control shell. You don't absolutely need to kill on turn 4, you just have to wait until you find a nice window (most of the time, you create that window with a big Gigadrowse end of turn), or often just before dying against aggro.
Time to explain the combo :
Your goal is to unearth a couple of Fatestitchers with Mesmeric Orb in play. They untap one another, allowing you to mill your entire deck. At that point, you flashback Unburial Rites on Necrotic Ooze. Here comes the "I-play-with-priority" part : if Unburial Rites resolves, you immediately use Devoted Druid's untap ability with Ooze, which puts a -1/-1 counter as a cost. You then can respond to it by using Morselhoarder's ability with Ooze to remove the counter and get a mana. Since it's a mana ability, it doesn't go on the stack and you get your mana immediately. You can then respond with Druid's ability again, etc... without ever passing priority. Once you have enough mana, still retaining priority, you activate Oona's ability with Ooze to exile your opponent's library, and finally pass priority. At that point, your opponent can finally play his Bolt/Path, but the lethal ability will still be on the stack.
Some useful tricks :
If you really need to kill on your turn and can't wait for your opponent's draw step (if you're dead with a Bolt during his upkeep, for instance), you can simply use your infinite mana to flashback Memory's journey on your Compulsive Research, use a Think Twice to draw it, and play it targeting your opponent to make him lose immediately.
If you have Oona in hand, just make infinite mana and use the Memory's journey tricks to discard it.
If you have Morselhoarder in hand, you have to do the same tricks with your regular mana, which can be tough and probably has to be divided on 2 turns. Careful with the interaction between Memory's journey + Mesmeric orb, end of turn Journey won't necessarily do want you want. This is one of the most complicated plays with the deck, really.
If you are in a strange situation (say, white Leyline with no solution in your deck), you can always avoid dying on your draw step by recurring the cards you want each turn with Memory's journey + Pull from Eternity. With infinite mana, you can loop with Memory's Journey shuffling Pull + Visions of Beyond + anything you want, getting infinite recursion of all the cards in your graveyard. This means you normally cannot lose with your infinite Remands, Muddle the mixture, and Gigadrowse.
90% of the time, you won't need those tricks, but they're here to show that the deck can be tough to play even once you combo out, and well... if they win you those 10% games, it's worth knowing them.
These tricks also explain some strange card choices, like the 1-ofs Compulsive research and See Beyond, or the "backup plan" as I called it. The rest of the cards are rather self-explanatory, and the proportions are the ones I felt confortable with after some testing. The main idea is that 4-ofs are the ones I want to see as much as possible in any game, and 3-ofs are a bit too heavy in doubles. Pretty standard.
Now, since I compared this deck to Splinter Twins, I have to go through the pros/cons of this deck :
- 1-card combo (Mesmeric Orb digs for the Stitchers) instead of 2-cards combo.
- Resilient to creature removal.
- Resilient to Spellskite.
- One of your combo cards (Orb) is a really good control tool since the deck is built around the graveyard, offering you card advantage in grinding games.
- Gets through Torpor Orb. Ok, that's a joke.
But :
- The deck doesn't like gravehate.
- Even though Orb is in my opinion better slightly than Deceiver/Pestermite without the combo, the other combo cards we run are close to being Splinter Twin-bad, and that's saying a lot. Granted, Devoted druid once saved me from a mana death, and I won some strange control games by simply slamming Oona, but I still think Twins is a little better concerning dead cards.
Personnally, as long as creature removal is so present (thank you Zoo) and gravehate so light in the sideboards, I think this deck is a better choice than Twins.
Since the metagame is still very unstable post ban, my sideboard also is, but the immuables are :
4 Ancient Grudge
4 Nature's Claim
Yes, you have 8 cards to side out against Affinity anyway, and grudge is obviously insane here. For the rest, it often contains some Ravenous Traps, some Psychic Drain (that's not a joke even though it looks like it) against aggressive red decks, and more classical sideboard stuff. I really feel that I need at least 4 hategrave cards post sideboard anyway, since Orb helps them as much as it helps you. Still, my games against Living end went surprisingly well (topdecking your Pull from Eternity or your Memory's journey in this matchup can be pretty fun), so maybe I'm overcalculating.
Spoils of the Vault : name Food Chain, exile cards from you library until you get one, hopefully exiling a Griffin along the way. For B, instant-speed, you tutor the 2 cards of your combo. And that's not good enough for you ?
Serum Powder : The card itself is pretty bad. Except it exiles your hand before your free mulligan. So you don't use it just to increase your chances of getting a Food Chain in your starting hand, you use it to have a starting hand of 8 cards or more. If your first hand has Serum Powder + Griffin, you get a free mulligan into 8 cards : the Griffin + 7 new ones. So stop comparing it to a tutor.
You're welcome.
That's the thing, you do cast artifacts when going off.
First, if you play him before going off, it's pretty obvious he's insane.
Now say you start going off and draw him. Generally, you start by drawing 3 or 4 cards off the first Sunrise. Then you have to play some more Stars and the like if you don't want to fizzle, because you need more draws to ensure getting a Sunrise/Revival. So if every single one of those artifacts you cast digs one more card, I assure you your risks to fizzle drop dramatically.
And to add to that, if I take my list as example, I now I play more than 20 dead cards when going off : 16 lands and 4 Lotus, to which you can add Pacts of negation (which you don't want to draw once going off, since they would have answered to the first Sunrise) and potentially some Reshapes depending on the situtation. That's more than 1/3 of the deck, which means 1 out of 3 draws if basically blank, potentially worse than blank for the Lotuses you can't tutor with Reshape anymore. Once you tried Riddlesmith, you realize you're just happy to draw anything, since what you care about is purely the card advantage, he will take care of the quality advantage.
116.3b states that after resolution of Unburial Rites, we get priority to have fun with our Ooze before our opponent can Bolt it.
116.3c states that after using any one of Ooze's abilities, we receive priority again, so we can respond to that ability we just activated by activating another one in response, or just the same one again.
That one didn't seem to be a problem for anyone, but I just quote it to make sure. Morselhoarder's is a mana ability, so you get your mana immediately without putting the ability on the stack or passing priority.
So, with all this, here is the script of the play :
Note that if you are scared of Trickbind, you can activate Oona's ability several times for a bunch of mana each, since after activating it once you get priority again, as usual. This also means that it works with Bloodrite Invoker, by stacking as many activations as you want before passing priority.
Appart from that, Orzhov Guildmage might even be a better kill than Bloodrite Invoker, since it's also easy to cast, probably a little better outside of the combo, and more importantly it doesn't target your opponent, so it gets through Leyline.
And here comes the crazy idea : I'm seriously considering cutting that creature kill slot. The idea is that you just make a billion mana of each color before your opponent gets to kill the Ooze, then recur a bunch of counterspells from your graveyard, a Gigadrowse to make sure he doesn't have answers, and then just loop for infinite Compulsive Research to make him draw his library. That still works, and running one less dead card in the deck might very well be important.
You actually never try to resolve Druid's ability, that's the trick. Adding the -1/-1 counter is a cost, so you pay it to put the ability on the stack, but you respond to that ability by removing the counter with Morserhoarder's ability, which is a mana ability. At that point, you still have druid's untap ability on the stack, but you keep priority and stack another untap ability, adding the counter as a cost, etc...
Thus, when you stack Oona's ability for 100, it's on top of a stack of 101 untap abilities from Druid waiting to resolve.
So no, your opponent has absolutely no chance to react if Ooze hits the table, even with split second spells.
Exactly.
And Orb digs for Fatestitchers itself, that's why I'm calling it a 1-card combo.
Concerning maniac, there are 2 problems :
- If you reanimate it, you need 1 more Unburial Rites (the first one still needed for Ooze if you hope to have enough mana) and the Maniac himself, which means 2 slots. This would be instead of our single Oona, which is 1 slot.
- Right now, we pass priority with a lethal ability on the stack, so creature removal does nothing against the combo. With Maniac, you pass priority with the flashbacked Think Twice on the stack, at which point your opponent can blast the hell out of Maniac to stop the combo (and probably win at the same time). I think that's the most important constraint.
It's exactly as blue describes : we have infinite mana, we just need a mana sink to use it. Since Oona is correct and just 1 card, to be better we would need a single card that has the ability to kill with infinite mana instantly, from the graveyard, without passing priority (which means no sorcery), and essentially more playable than Oona outside the combo. The easiest way to do that are the mana sink creatures blue listed in his post. If anyone knows other creatures of the sort, feel free to help us.
With that in mind, Bloodrite Invoker might be better than Oona, I didn't know him. I'll note each time I draw Oona if Invoker would've been better with his 3/1 body for 2B. And maybe there is a situation where exiling the library is better than killing with infinite life loss ? Can't think of one, though.
On a more general note, the deck is really stable from what I've seen in tests. I'm pretty happy with the manabase, Loam helps a lot to keep some hands with Orb that might be short in lands. You often find your kill with Orb and not play it, just waiting for the right window with your Remands, Gigadrowse and Muddle.
And I don't know if it's worth something, but I'm having a stupid streak of winning matches on Cockatrice. ^^
One of them being the funniest game ever, winning without combo just by going turn 2 Orb, turn 3 Orb, countering stuff and milling the opponent old-style.
Here is a list I tried without much success pre-Innistrad :
4 Crypt of Agadeem
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Marsh Flats
1 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Watery Grave
1 Blood Crypt
2 Ghost Quarter
4 Hedron Crab
3 Life from the Loam
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
4 Zombie Infestation
4 Street Wraith
4 Monstrous Carabid
4 Extractor Demon
4 Sedraxis Specter
1 Kederekt Leviathan
Strange stuff I was testing
2 Raven's Crime
2 Big Game Hunter
You tried to fill your graveyard fast, make some chumpers for aggro or going Loam-Raven's Crime against combo and control, then at some point you tap crypt for tons of mana, unearth a bunch of dudes, and win.
Bloodghast didn't make the cut because I wanted chumpblockers, killing is not a problem when you got your dredge engine going.
Pharaoh might be nice, though.
You made me realise I potentially didn't explain enough in my first post, because you made some mistakes, the most important one being :
You actually need only 4 mana to combo off : unearthed Fatestichers are virtually free, since they can untap the land used to pay for them. The usual play is "Tap island, unearth fatestitcher, tap him to untap the island, tap island again, unearth second Fatestitcher, mill my library, end the loop by untapping the same island one last time".
That's the same amount of mana that's needed for Splinter Twin, except you get to use your mana on the previous turn for something else than a 2U flash dude (say, Gigadrowse ?).
Except Eggs doesn't run 25 control cards, including those 4 insane Gigadrowse. And if really you played poorly and ran into a counterspell (because those decks generally don't have a clock), you can always go for Journey on Pull from Eternity to put Unburial Rites back in the graveyard. But really, I never ran into a counterspell in all my tests, and god knows people are trying to build control decks on Cockatrice...
The gravehate is a problem, yes, and it's hard to win against it. That's just a metagame call, for the moment grave-based decks are completely absent, so sideboards are light against us. If some form of Dredge comes back, or if this deck is played, it will get problematic and the deck will becoe a bad choice, yes.
So you can't kill anymore if your opponent has an Eldrazi in his deck (and that's a lot of decks right now), because Laquatus mills whereas Oona exiles. And Oona in hand is never a problem, you just make infinite mana with Ooze and then cast her to kill, so I don't see what you mean by "you can win with it on the field".
And honestly, ambassador is soooo bad alone, whereas Oona can steal some games against control.
I like Ideas Unbound, maybe I'll test it in place of Visions. They're probably better all the way, actually, I think you're right.
Glimpse, on the other hand, doesn't do anything alone.
The misconception here is that you don't play from your graveyard, you just use it. It's not dredge, if you empty your hand to fill your grave, then what are you going to do ? You don't run Narcomeabas, Bloodghasts or anything like that.
You forgot to count the 2U to play him, which makes that plan actually more expensive.
And instead of remaining resilient to creature removal, you now lose to it (flashback Think Twice, in response your opponent path/bolt/dismembers your fragile 2/2).
Oh, and you also need him in hand too, which is probably the worst problem of all. You would need to run 4 of him to be consistent, which adds a wooping 4 dead cards to the deck. Your 1-card combo has now become a 2-card combo. ^^
I know Laboratory Maniac seems sexy, but I thought about it when he got spoiled and I'm convinced it's really a bad idea.
Maybe I'll try some Nobles after testing Ideas Unbound. Not sure the manabase could stand it well, and you would need to drop either some draw or some protection to make some room, but I can try it.
Thanks for not letting me alone on that topic.
For the moment, the results are encouraging : positive against Zoo and Affinity (Gigadrowse is MVP here, especially against affinity were you only need to tap a few beaters if he doesn't have BB for Plating).
Combo matchups are pretty correct too, except for Ascension which can also sit back and wait to activate it, especially if you help him with Orb.
Control is a joke, never lost a game against any form of it.
Oh, and the fact that most opponents don't know how to play against this deck and fall in all the tricks is hilarious. I often play against confident opponents sitting back on their Bolt for Necrotic Ooze, who realize when you go off that they don't have a window to play it.
I'm currently trying with -1 Visions of Beyond, +1 Forest because I had a a few mana screws (never color problems, though, that's a good point), and it will be my main target for Misty rainforests post side against Blood moon. I don't like running non-blue sources with 4 Gigadrowse, but I guess 2 out of 21 is ok.
Talking about Madness, the 2 good ones in modern are Dark Withering and Grave Scrabbler. But they're both really bad without Infestation in play, which adds to the inconsistency again. Potentially Big Game Hunter in the sideboard, also.
I mean, 2/2 zombies are nice when they are many, but even then sometimes they're just not enough.
Anyway, I really think in a deck that runs Life from the Loam and wants to consistently get back 3 lands early with it can be BGwr. With all those fetches, a couple W and R duals seems pretty easy to add.
Oh, and for Shred Memory, the problem is it's terrible alone. If there were some grave-based decks in modern, it would probably be a playable tutor, but here it will just be a bad tutor most of the time (3 mana, heavy black, sorcery-speed... It's almost the same power level as Diabolic Tutor, 1 for polyvalence seems fairly cheap). Muddle the mixture and Tolaria West are terrible tutors, but at least they're a decent counterspell and a land, that's why they are played.
I think finding another discard outlet that does something nice seems like the most viable solution. At some point I switched colors and tried running Zombie Infestation + Magus of the bazaar, but it still wasn't good.
He really brings the consistency the deck is missing : pre-combo, you can just sculpt your hand happily. In-combo, it basically draws half your deck. Sad to draw tons of lands and Lotus ? Sure, let's recycle them. You drew 2 Lotus and now your Reshapes are as good as dead ? Just discard them to Riddlesmith and put them back with Bauble.
And if they make my opponent keep his creature removal post side, I'm happy. Maybe I even sided them out. ^^
No, really, he's that good.
it didn't do anything, and I really mean anything, when you didn't have Infestation. You can't dig for it with Loam, you have absolutely no draw engine, and you play 14 dead cards without it online.
And the worst thing is that even if you have Infestation, it really is terrible without Loam, and once again you have absolutely no way of digging for Loam (except Loam itself :p). At least I ran some Stinkweed Imps, so I could dig more aggressively for my Loams or one of my 4 Squees, but here you have nothing.
If you really want to try and make that deck work, at least play a little more dredgers, and run some Raven's Crime.
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Watery Grave
1 Breeding Pool
1 Steam Vents
5 Island
1 Academy Ruins
Combo
4 Mesmeric Orb
4 Fatestitcher
1 Unburial Rites
1 Necrotic Ooze
1 Devoted Druid
1 Morselhoarder
1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
1 Memory's Journey
1 Pull from Eternity
Control shell
4 Remand
4 Gigadrowse
3 Gitaxian Probe
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Think Twice
3 Muddle the Mixture
2 Visions of Beyond
1 Compulsive Research
1 See Beyond
1 Life from the Loam
Before describing the combo, I really want to note that the deck is a control-combo, which means its gameplay is very similar to the one of Splinter Twins : you have a combo finish, inside a rather important control shell. You don't absolutely need to kill on turn 4, you just have to wait until you find a nice window (most of the time, you create that window with a big Gigadrowse end of turn), or often just before dying against aggro.
Time to explain the combo :
Your goal is to unearth a couple of Fatestitchers with Mesmeric Orb in play. They untap one another, allowing you to mill your entire deck. At that point, you flashback Unburial Rites on Necrotic Ooze. Here comes the "I-play-with-priority" part : if Unburial Rites resolves, you immediately use Devoted Druid's untap ability with Ooze, which puts a -1/-1 counter as a cost. You then can respond to it by using Morselhoarder's ability with Ooze to remove the counter and get a mana. Since it's a mana ability, it doesn't go on the stack and you get your mana immediately. You can then respond with Druid's ability again, etc... without ever passing priority. Once you have enough mana, still retaining priority, you activate Oona's ability with Ooze to exile your opponent's library, and finally pass priority. At that point, your opponent can finally play his Bolt/Path, but the lethal ability will still be on the stack.
Some useful tricks :
If you really need to kill on your turn and can't wait for your opponent's draw step (if you're dead with a Bolt during his upkeep, for instance), you can simply use your infinite mana to flashback Memory's journey on your Compulsive Research, use a Think Twice to draw it, and play it targeting your opponent to make him lose immediately.
If you have Oona in hand, just make infinite mana and use the Memory's journey tricks to discard it.
If you have Morselhoarder in hand, you have to do the same tricks with your regular mana, which can be tough and probably has to be divided on 2 turns. Careful with the interaction between Memory's journey + Mesmeric orb, end of turn Journey won't necessarily do want you want. This is one of the most complicated plays with the deck, really.
If you are in a strange situation (say, white Leyline with no solution in your deck), you can always avoid dying on your draw step by recurring the cards you want each turn with Memory's journey + Pull from Eternity. With infinite mana, you can loop with Memory's Journey shuffling Pull + Visions of Beyond + anything you want, getting infinite recursion of all the cards in your graveyard. This means you normally cannot lose with your infinite Remands, Muddle the mixture, and Gigadrowse.
90% of the time, you won't need those tricks, but they're here to show that the deck can be tough to play even once you combo out, and well... if they win you those 10% games, it's worth knowing them.
These tricks also explain some strange card choices, like the 1-ofs Compulsive research and See Beyond, or the "backup plan" as I called it. The rest of the cards are rather self-explanatory, and the proportions are the ones I felt confortable with after some testing. The main idea is that 4-ofs are the ones I want to see as much as possible in any game, and 3-ofs are a bit too heavy in doubles. Pretty standard.
Now, since I compared this deck to Splinter Twins, I have to go through the pros/cons of this deck :
- 1-card combo (Mesmeric Orb digs for the Stitchers) instead of 2-cards combo.
- Resilient to creature removal.
- Resilient to Spellskite.
- One of your combo cards (Orb) is a really good control tool since the deck is built around the graveyard, offering you card advantage in grinding games.
- Gets through Torpor Orb. Ok, that's a joke.
But :
- The deck doesn't like gravehate.
- Even though Orb is in my opinion better slightly than Deceiver/Pestermite without the combo, the other combo cards we run are close to being Splinter Twin-bad, and that's saying a lot. Granted, Devoted druid once saved me from a mana death, and I won some strange control games by simply slamming Oona, but I still think Twins is a little better concerning dead cards.
Personnally, as long as creature removal is so present (thank you Zoo) and gravehate so light in the sideboards, I think this deck is a better choice than Twins.
Since the metagame is still very unstable post ban, my sideboard also is, but the immuables are :
4 Ancient Grudge
4 Nature's Claim
Yes, you have 8 cards to side out against Affinity anyway, and grudge is obviously insane here. For the rest, it often contains some Ravenous Traps, some Psychic Drain (that's not a joke even though it looks like it) against aggressive red decks, and more classical sideboard stuff. I really feel that I need at least 4 hategrave cards post sideboard anyway, since Orb helps them as much as it helps you. Still, my games against Living end went surprisingly well (topdecking your Pull from Eternity or your Memory's journey in this matchup can be pretty fun), so maybe I'm overcalculating.