This is a prototype for my non-stormy
Kess, Dissident Mage
deck. I tried to brew something that uses combos but still has a lot of interaction with the table so it doesn't feel like playing Solitaire. I initially wanted to go completelly creatureless but somehow
Notion Thief
and
Laboratory Maniac
still found their way into the list.
In the following text I'll explain a few of the things you can do with this list.
I'll start with the stuff that should't be missing in any Kess deck, mostly cantrips and loot spells such as
Ponder
and
Careful Study
. Cantrips, especially the 1cmc ones, are awesome in any Kess deck since they leave you with a card advantege of +1 when recast from the grave in addition to their other effects. Loot spells let you dig through your library but don't give you card advantege. They are verry useful if you want to place a card in your grave or to get your land drops in early game.
Secrets of the Dead
is pretty self explaining and
Fact or Fiction
is a good draw spell on its own wich is even better when most cards that go into the grave aren't lost.
Increasing Vengeance
is also a must have. Casting it from the grave with Kess allmost feels like cheating. The last card I'd call a Kess-staple is
Isochron Scepter
. Allthough this list doesn't make full use of Isochrons potential there are quit a few funny things to put behind it.
Let's take a look at ramp, rocks and the land base. Nothing to fancy here.
The Signets are good and budged friendly rocks for every 3+ colored deck, same with
Fellwar Stone
.
Chromatic Lantern
,
Talisman of Dominance
and
Talisman of Indulgence
help to produce enough colored mana to (double)cast spells with low or no colorless costs. The lifeloss the talismans cause isn't a problem in a 40 life format imo.
Dark Ritual
and
Cabal Ritual
help us cast our high cmc stuff like
Ward of Bones
or
Swarm Intelligence
. They can also be used twice, either in the same turn or not, thanks to Kess.
Dark Ritual
is also verry useful on the opening hand.
The landbase is again rather budget friendly; okay it's just cheap.
Geier Reach Sanitarium
lets everybody loot for 1. Can be pretty neat if you can't do anything else and has good synergy with
Notion Thief
but the real reason this,
Lonely Sandbar
and the other two Cycling lands found their way into this list is
Laboratory Maniac
. These four lands can be used to "draw" a card and win us the game (or loose it). More about this later.
Next thing are the wheels and their synergies, wich will do a lot of work in this deck.
We have 2 "mini-whells"
Burning Inquiry
and
Urza's Guilt
(wich is mostly here cause I like the artwork), 4 "real-wheels"
Windfall
,
Whispering Madness
,
Dark Deal
and
Incendiary Command
and we have
Memory Jar
.
All of them will give you triggers for
Notion Thief
,
Dream Salvage
,
Diviner's Wand
,
Liliana's Caress
,
Megrim
and
Sphinx's Tutelage
in most situations, help you dig through your library and fill your second hand (your graveyard).
I'll do a little explanation for every one of the wheels:
Burning Inquiry
is a nasty little 1 drop. It doesn't care if you or the opponents have cards in hand. It will allays give you 3 draw and discard triggers. Depending on the rest of your opening hand and your luck you may also cast it on turn 1 wich can have a devastating effect.
Urza's Guilt
Well, to be honest it's probably not the best card but not that bad either. It gives you and everyone else 2 draw triggers and min 2, max 3 discard triggers and works on empty hands. It also makes everyone loose 4 life so combined with
Liliana's Caress
or
Megrim
it costs each of your opponents 8 or 10 life for 4 mana. This is kind of a pet card of mine and it fits in the deck so I put it in.
Windfall
and
Whispering Madness
are probably the two best wheels in this list since they only care how much cards the player with most cards in hand got. You mostly want to use them when your hand is empty and someone else's hand is full. If one player on the table has 10+ cards in hand, you've got
Liliana's Caress
or
Megrim
on the field and manage to cast one of these wheels from your hand and then again from the grave (maybe even copy it once or twice) you can easyly kill the whole table. If you do the same with
Notion Thief
instead of
Liliana's Caress
on the board you can draw insane amounts of cards. Possibly milling someone out when combined with
Sphinx's Tutelage
.
Whispering Madness
can be Ciphered onto Kess for a free wheel whenever she deals damage wich is pretty sweet.
Dark Deal
and
Incendiary Command
are the other two "real-wheels". they let everyone discard their hand and re-draw to the same amount (-1 in the case of
Dark Deal
) so it's a little harder to time them.
Incendiary Command
is probably to expensice to double cast it in one turn but it get's you rid of a land or does 2 damage to every creature in addition. These two dont have the same potential with
Notion Thief
, other then that they can be used like
Windfall
or
Whispering Madness
.
Memory Jar
works a little different from the rest. It's an artifact so we can only use it once, its draw is fixed at 7 and it does't care about or change everyones original hand. Since you don't need to activate it the same turn you've cast it, it can also serve a rather political use. My favorite thing to do with
Memory Jar
is to get
Turbulent Dreams
into my grave the turn before i cast the Jar, activate it and bounce my opponents stuff back to their "Jar hand" wich they have to discard at the end of turn.
Also note that all wheels are friends with
Cyclonic Rift
,
Turbulent Dreams
and sometimes
Devastation Tide
Another thing this deck does is to hate on creatures. We only run 2 creatures besides Kess and one of them should only hit the battlefield the same turn you win the game (or loose it), so symmetrical creature hate is our friend.
Overburden
,
Tainted AEther
and
Ward of Bones
are stand alones whos job is to either punish people for playing creatures or in case of
Ward of Bones
simply not allow them to do so if they allready have more then one on the battlefield.
Propaganda
makes us an unantractive target to attack.
Burning Sands
and
Repercussion
are a bit more complicated , they don't do anything on their own exept for writing a big red target on your forhead.
Burning Sands
makes everyone sac a land whenver one of his creatures bites the dust. We have enough ways to cause this. Allways funny to play it when a
Meren of Clan Nel Toth
is at the table. Not verry usefull against decks that don't really play creatures though.
Repercussion
is even worse than
Burning Sands
. First the 3cmc are ridiculously cheap for what it does. Combined with
Blasphemous Act
, a big
Earthquake
etc. it most likely kills everyone who's got more than a few creatures on the board. A nice wincon for most decks that run red, also for aggro decks.
Yet another way to tease your playgroup is the
Anvil of Bogardan
+
Notion Thief
trick. The Anvil makes everyone draw an extra card and then discard one card, so a free loot for everyone. Isn't that nice!
Add the
Notion Thief
to it and it turns your opponents draw + free loot into just a loot without the draw and a free draw for you whenever they do so.
If you manage to empty their hands while these two cards are on the table this can win you the game if no one draws into an instant speed removal
Now I'll come to the last important combo of this deck. The Labman selfmill. Most of you probably know about this guy and how he's used but anyway;
Laboratory Maniac
makes you magically win the game when you would draw a card while there is none left to draw. He only costs 3 mana so thats not the problem, the problem is how to get rid of your library.
There are quite a few ways to do this and I choose the following two:
Enter the Infinite
, preferentially cast with
Spelltwine
, play
Laboratory Maniac
, somehow draw two cards.
This is the gentlemans way to do it but you will need lots of mana. At least 10 to be accurate.
The other way, wich is a lot cheaper and a lot more fun is
Demonic Consultation
.
Safe way to do it is when
Laboratory Maniac
is in your hand. Play him and when he does't get counterd just cast
Demonic Consultation
and name a card that is not in your deck (this is legal, I double checked), since you will not find the card this wil result in your whole library beeing exiled . Now you only need to draw one single card and its done, unless someone bolts the maniac. Can be done for min. 5 mana.
The not so safe way is to double cast
Demonic Consultation
useing Kess, or to copy it, to tutor for
Laboratory Maniac
the first time and then do the same as above the second time. If he's not amongst the first six cards when you tutor for him everything's fine. If he is amongst the first six cards you'll end up without a library and without a Labman.
I guess you could allso try to wheel until your library is empty and then cast
Laboratory Maniac
but this will most likely not work.
Some more minor interactions or janky stuff to do are;
-turn your
Isochron Scepter
into a mana rock by putting
Cabal Ritual
behind it
-
Polymorph
Kess into
Laboratory Maniac
or
Notion Thief
-bore your playgroup into scooping by imprinting
Lim-Dul's Vault
into
Isochron Scepter
and use it every turn
-use
Lim-Dul's Vault
,
Mystical Tutor
or
Insidious Dreams
to tutor
Devastation Tide
on top of your library for a cheap board wipe
-try to kill someone with
Lightning Bolt
+
Swarm Intelligence
+
Increasing Vengeance
-mill a single player with
Enter the Infinite
+
Sphinx's Tutelage
-
Gamble
for
Enter the Infinite
while you have no cards in hand so you can cast it with
Spelltwine
The cards that I left out in the description are mosty removals and tutors that are pretty self exmplaining and lands that don't do anything but generate mana.
Well, that's it. I hope you enjoyed the read. I'm allways thankful for advise and critic so feel free to leave a comment.
