The Wretched

This deck has been sitting on my desk for months now, waiting for me to pay attention to it. Time to get that done. (Quick aside: I know this is a flavor fail deck, since it's blue/green and has no space for The Wretched. I have no defense against that, sorry!)

10 Island
10 Forest
3 Simic Growth Chamber

4 Spellbook

1 Simic Sky Swallower
4 Quirion Elves
3 Stormtide Leviathan

2 Fable of Wolf and Owl
4 Recycle

3 Capsize
2 Elvish Fury
4 Ancestral Vision
2 Rethink
4 Brainstorm
4 Counterspell

It's a Recycle-Spellbook deck. Step 1, play Recycle, step 2, drop Spellbook to negate the drawback and have the opportunity to draw the deck out. Step 3 is where I'm a little more concerned because the winning part is a bit less clear.

I added Fable of Wolf and Owl years ago because it seemed like a natural fit: play the enchantment, use the buyback ability of Capsize and Elvish Fury to create an army for free and then win. That's the theory, anyway. However, it's a six mana enchantment that doesn't win me the game on the spot and I already have one of those. The Fable is probably a story for another deck.

As you might imagine, this deck was built back when Tempest block was legal, which means I laid the groundwork for it in 1997. Some of the card choices certainly reflect that. However, 20 years is a long time and this is why I cannot remember why I named the deck after the Nine Inch Nails song. Then again, given how this deck may perform, calling it wretched might be more appropriate than I would like.

The most obvious thing to add would be Prophet of Kruphix to help boost my buyback spells. Spells with Rebound may be worth testing, if I can find something that's useful: The list is not encouraging. Ancestral Vision and Brainstorm may not be the best fit either, with Anticipate being a better choice because I'm not running fetchlands. Don't get me wrong: Ancestral Vision is powerful but I'm thinking I need to be more proactive.