Painter combo, but U/B!
Kind of a combo deck, kind of a control deck. It's weird. I'll explain.
First things first, the ~mulligan~
You'll generally want to keep a hand that has some sort of disruption/removal (
Thoughtseize
,
Spell Pierce
,
Daze
/
Force of Will
) followed by draw or the actual combo. You'll also always want to keep at least one land, 2 is okay, but I'll only ever keep a hand with no lands if I have
Lotus Petal
and crazy aggressive draw, like
Ponder
and
Preordain
or something similar.
The reason I say this deck is somewhat combo and somewhat control is because our actual combo--
Grindstone
and
Painter's Servant
-- is only 6 mana total across 2 cards, and both can be played/activated on the same turn. Because the deck runs
Dark Ritual
,
Lotus Petal
and
Ancient Tomb
, we can pull this combo off almost as soon as we get it in our hand, sometimes as early as turn one or two with a great draw.
However, this is not always the case. Control decks run
Force of Will
and other disruption, we get wrecked by cards like
Pithing Needle
, and our combo doesn't always come together. For this reason, we run "aggressive" removal tools like
Thoughtseize
and
Spell Pierce
and
Force of Will
(
Daze
for the budget-friendly) to counter our opponent's counter.
I'd like to dedicate a portion of this guide to explain my "correct" usage of
Lim-Dul's Vault
, because used well and it's game-winning, but used poorly, you've essentially spent mana to do nothing, since you don't actually draw with the card. Because of this, I recommend to never keep it in openers unless it's directly accompanied by draw, OR you can ramp it out turn one to stack your top 5 and guarantee a successful, game-winning curve. Post turn 2, you'll want to use it to either find the combo/missing combo piece, ramp, disruption, or whatever it is you may need.
The sideboard is still very much a work in progress. As such, I'm not going to include a write-up on it just yet.
Feel free to leave comments/critiques/suggestions. Thanks for reading!
