Do you like forcing opponents to discard cards? Do you like watching every move your opponents make? Do you like them taking damage from cards like Liliana's Caress or Megrim? Are you a horrible person like me? Then THIS is the deck for you!
Since you will be looking at peoples cards and doing discard combos, this deck also has some protect, with board wipes, enchantment protection like Propaganda and No Mercy, and cards like Cyclonic Rift to get your opponents stuff back into their hand. Why their hand you ask? So you can discard them! And you thought a board wipe was degenerate!
On a more serious note, this deck is very control oriented. It focuses on crippling your opponents' board, whether through discard, counterspells, or making it impossible for them to attack you, and winning the game through combos or taking advantage of either your graveyard or your opponents' graveyard. This deck mostly, as one can see, has a discard theme, with cards like Mind Twist or Delirium Skeins, that combine with other spells in your deck such as Words of Waste, Waste Not, Geth's Grimoire, and others. The deck is slow and gritty, and if you like decks that can control your opponents' and even watch their every move, than this just might be the deck for you.
Deck Philosophy:
I ran into the issue of how to win the game with this discard strategy. I tried to go the more cheese, Telepathy route, with focus on dealing damage through discard. But this proved to make the deck rely too heavily on Neb and the hand reveal strategy. Hate cards like Narset, Parter of Veils proved to make the deck even more annoying than it already was. So, I decided that, while keeping the deck strategy, I would try to find synergies with Creatures.
Putting more threatening creatures on the board, as well as ones that benefit from the graveyards of opponents, makes the discarding more rewarding and powerful. Before, I was doing a kind of pseudo-Nekusar, the Mindrazer, focusing more on the discard damage. Moving away from that and giving this deck multiple outlets of power, both with creatures and discard spells, makes this deck much better.
Win Cons:
1.) Megrim/Liliana's Caress + Windfall/Whispering Madness + Words of Waste = Why Draw When You can Win Instead?
- This combo takes quite a bit of time to set up, but luckily this deck has a lot of control and ways to keep opponents off of you. Once the enchantments are in play, the mana-rocks ready,and you have your wheel spells, ho boy oh boy this combo can potentially kill the whole table. The only issue that would need to be addressed is when you are facing an opponent that has a ton of life gain (I have a few ideas for what do add to address this that I'll add in a future update).
2.) Wheels + Geth's Grimoire = Holy Shit, That's a lot of Cards
- This is a fairly basic combo, but an important one. The Grimoire along side cards like Windfall or Whispering Madness can help you draw a ton of cards. Even if you have no cards in hand, making the rest of the table wheel will draw you a lot of cards, helping you find answers and help you finish your combo pieces. Also make sure you have cards like Thought Vessel and Reliquary Tower to help keep stuff in your hand incase you absolutely need it all but can't cast it.
3.) Temple Bell + Words of Waste + 1 mana = Discard Synergy
- This one is a simple combo, but very good at annoying the hell out of your opponents. While your opponents will still draw a card and you don't, they all need to discard a card as well. This works well in conjunction with what is in your deck, like Geth's Grimoire, Liliana's Caress, or Waste Not. Nothing flashy, but it gets the job done. You will notice that their isn't any sort of infinite combos, but just basic synergies.
4) The Power of Creatures
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There are some seriously underrated creatures that I discovered in all my years of working on this deck. Abyssal Nocturnus, with a single wheel affect like Jace's Archivist, can legit kill a player with one attack in a multiplayer game. Blizzard Specter is simple but versatile, giving you the ability to return cards to players hands or simply discarding their cards. The Haunt of Hightower is a really solid big creature that just becomes annoying large, with built in discard that helps him sustain himself if you don't have that power yet. Wrexial, the Risen Deep is terrifying against opponents with really powerful instant and sorcery spells. It might be worth it to run Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth just to get his full strength.
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Big creatures are scary. Consuming Aberration is an epic example of this, that really becomes terrifying as the game goes on. Pseudo-big creatures like Guiltfeeder are also really good at threatening your opponent with simply having any cards in their yard.
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Tourach, Dread Cantor is one of the most exciting new entries for this deck. The problem before with a card like Hymn to Tourch was that it did nothing to impact the board state, and only targeted one player. Even though the effect can potentially be game changing and is good, it's very limited. Putting it on a body that gets bigger regardless of getting kicked is absolutely awesome. It's an instant replacement of the card.
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This deck has added a bit more reanimation to its kit over the course of time. The classic Animate Dead is a solid card that gets you either something from your yard or others. Reanimate is simple and the most flexible of all, with its reputation being overtly expressed by the coining of the entire strategy around its name and ability. Puppeteer Clique takes advantage of the creatures we put into their graveyard. Lazav, Dimir Mastermind, though not directly reanimation, can take advantage of the creatures in opponent's graveyards by copying them.
Possible Includes & Ideas:
1.) Better Cards:
- Sort of going off the infinite combos part, there are better cards to include here. One can go many directions, like having more artifacts and having Power Artifact to go nuts. Or adding better counterspells like Cryptic Command. If you really want to get crazy, add something like Chains of Mephistopheles. It's a good card, but it's got quite the price tag.
2.) More Flashback cards?
- Perhaps we should lean more into flashback and throw away the amount of counter magic in this deck (though 4 counter spells isn't too overkill). Echo of Eons and a hand full of other things may be worth the include as well. The amount of wheeling and cards like Breathstealer's Crypt don't just help but our scary creatures into the yard, but could also do so with Flashback spells.
(old note on Infinite Combos, since Temple Bell is no longer in the deck:
- Some of you might have noticed that Temple Bell is in the deck, but that their is a few cards missing to make an infinite one. That being Mind Over Matter and a original eldrazi titan, like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. If you are not aware of the combo, you first have the Bell and Mind Over Matter in play. Second, tap the Bell, everyone draws a card. Next, use Mind Over Matter to discard a card to untap the Bell. You repeat this forever, forcing everyone to draw their entire deck and lose. But what about you? Well, if you have a card like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre in your deck, your graveyard simply shuffles back into your deck. This is a simple infinite combo that would be good to include. The reason why I did not was because of cost. If I decide to buy this deck on paper and enjoy it enough, I will most likely invest into a Mind Over Matter, since it is on the reserved list.)
