Thursday, August 11, 2016

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.



4 comments:

  1. -4 ancestral vision, +4 gitaxian probe. Recycle loves cheap spells. Plus 2 cards for free is pretty nice.
    Cards that have alternate mana costs could be a good fit as well. Like invigorate.
    If you ran exploration a way double-down on recycle card draw is ensnare.

    Null tread gargantuan could be good.
    Definitely lorescale coatl
    Definitely chasm skulker
    Definitely coiling oracle
    1 or 2 kruphix god

    Maybe zameck guildmage
    Maybe master biomaster
    Maybe shorecrasher mimic
    Maybe transfer fate

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    Replies
    1. Those are some pretty good ideas. I hadn't thought of Kruphix, just the prophet. Gitaxian Probe also seemed like a good idea, but it's hard to replace Brainstorm, even when I ought to.

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  2. Yeah brainstorm is primarily broken when you have sac lands. If shuffle effects aren't in your deck then it is merely decent card.

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  3. Yeah brainstorm is primarily broken when you have sac lands. If shuffle effects aren't in your deck then it is merely decent card.

    ReplyDelete