v0.4
This deck is now even more simplified. Displacer and Brand are no longer necessary, but white has good SB choices for hate cards and removal. Mainboard Simic, SB Bant. Legacy NoCo, Dubious Challenge, seems to interest a ton of people over at the reddit post. The idea is to sneak in 2 creatures by using Dubious Challenge using Ponder and Brainstorm to insure you have a Brooding Saurian in the deck when casting NoCo or making sure you have a Homeward Path to get the creature the opponent ends up with. I have a copy of Show and Tell only for redundancy. My big fatties are Emrakul and Jin-Gitaxias. I can't use any creatures that have ETB or activated ability effects so the opponents won't get the value.
11X BOMBS
Tarmogoyf is an easy choice for a playset, being able to cats it early or get it through NoCo. I placed in 4-of Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur as both a bomb and as FoW food. There used to only be one copy of Emrakul, the Aeons Torn thanks to his not being able to be targeted by Vapor Snag, but since it's no longer necessary, We have 3-of Emrakul. Other creatures that you could put in here include: Sire Of Insanity, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Charmbreaker Devils, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Sigarda, Host of Herons, and Blightsteel Colossus.
5X SNEAK
This is a NoCo deck, so if course we're gonna put 4 copies of it. We'll also want increase our chances of drawing it by turn 4, having the odds of drawing a combo piece 1 out of 12 by adding 1-of Show and Tell is enough, rather than 2-of, since you'll have Brainstorm and Ponder to set up draws. I prefer Show to Sneak Attack because it is FoW food.
7X RECLAIM
Brooding Saurian and Homeward Path are here for this very reason. 4/4 for 4 is not amazing, it's fine, but if it can get our win cons from the opponent, that's solid. Having Homeward Path in makes us feel better than having to ensure a Saurian in the deck. Sine it's out, we can easily cast NoCo turn 4 or 5 with Path up.
7x COUNTER
To protect our combo and to prevent our opponents from progressing their game, we have Force of Will and Spell Pierce. We can't run Daze here since it's important to get our combo out as fast as possible. FoW is the main reason I have Show and Tell and Jin Gitaxias in the deck.
12x SUPPORT
8 cards total dig to help put us put our deck in order, playsets of Brainstorm and Ponder. There's also a 2-of Lotus Petal to help a bit in getting to our combo faster and 2-of Crop Rotation to help get lands we need, like a quick fetch into Homeward Path, Karakas, or Bojuka Bog.
21x LAND
This needs to be a fast deck. Tons of fetches to shuffle cards we Brainstorm away and cards like City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb that give us double mana. There are some lands in here as well as the sideboard that act as utility that can be fetched through Crop Rotation. Main land in the deck is of course Homeward Path, a part of our combo.
Below are older versions of the deck
RUG became Bant because white became a better splash color, after trying out Eldrazi Displacer and after looking at Sideboard options.
v0.3
3 Ancient Tomb
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
4 Brainstorm
4 Brooding Saurian
2 Crop Rotation
4 Dubious Challenge
3 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Flooded Strand
4 Force of Will
2 Forest
3 Homeward Path
2 Island
4 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Karakas
2 Lotus Petal
3 Misty Rainforest
4 Ponder
1 Show and Tell
3 Spell Pierce
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
This deck used to be a RUG deck, but red was ditched when Brand no longer became necessary. The final build became something like this:
v0.2
3 Ancient Tomb
4 Brainstorm
4 Brand
4 Brooding Saurian
1 City of Traitors
4 Dubious Challenge
3 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Force of Will
1 Forest
1 Homeward Path
2 Island
4 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
2 Lotus Petal
3 Misty Rainforest
4 Ponder
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Show and Tell
2 Spell Pierce
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
Below is the description of v0.2 of the deck.
v0.1
2x Ancient Tomb
4x Brainstorm
4x Brand
2x City of Traitors
4x Dubious Challenge
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4x Force of Will
2x Iona, Shield of Emeria
2x Island
3x Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
2x Lotus Petal
3x Misty Rainforest
1x Mountain
4x Ponder
4x Scalding Tarn
2x Show and Tell
2x Sire Of Insanity
2x Spell Pierce
4x Tarmogoyf
2x Tropical Island
3x Vapor Snag
3x Volcanic Island
I like brewing and proving people wrong, so, my challenge today is making a Legacy NoCo, Dubious Challenge, deck. The idea is to sneak in 2 creatures by using Dubious Challenge then using either Brand or Vapor Snag to get the creature the opponent ends up with. I have some copies of Show and Tell as an alt win-con. Only 1 copy of Emrakul because Vapor Snag can't target it. Can't use Griselbrand, Vorinclex, or creatures with ETB like the Titans or Ashen Rider because I don't want the opponent to get any value off of the Dubious Challenge.
Do try it out, because through goldfishing, it seems to consistently win turn 4-6. Here are some thoughts on the build:
12X CREATURES
I used to put Liege of the Tangle instead of Tarmogoyf because you don't want to cast the creatures anyway, you want to sneak them in. However, with the amount of creatures you need for NoCo to work, you'll be drawing into quite a few, so it would be wise to put a creature you would be able to cast as a 4-of. The rest are 2-ofs for the sole reason since most are legendary. I placed in 3-of Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur as FoW food. As stated above, there's only one copy of Emrakul, the Aeons Torn thanks to his not being able to be targeted by Vapor Snag. Iona, Shield of Emeria used to be a 3-of, but now a 2-of since the opponent could possible lock out blue from the game, so I want that as little as possible. Sire Of Insanity is quite good here. If games go long enough, he could be casted with a Petal and 5 lands, since we have red anyway.
6X SNEAK
This is a NoCo deck, so if course we're gonna put 4 copies of it. We'll also want increase our chances of drawing it by turn 4, having the odds of drawing the piece 1 out of 10, by adding 2-of Show and Tell. I prefer that to Sneak Attack because it is FoW food.
7X RECLAIM
The big card here is Brand since it gets back the creature my opponent would get from me and it is, in fact, an instant. The other plan is to bounce that creature to my hand and making the opponent lose a life with Vapor Snag.
6x COUNTER
Majority of the deck is in fact blue, as a control deck. We have tempo plays with bounce and Tarmogoyf and we have the combo into a bomb, but we also have 6 cards that function solely as control cards. 4-of Force of Will is quite an obvious need. 2-of Spell Pierce is there as extra insurance.
10x SUPPORT
8 cards total dig to help put us put our deck in order, playsets of Brainstorm and Ponder. There's also a 2-of Lotus Petal to help a bit in getting to our combo faster.
19x LAND
This needs to be a fast deck, so the land base is quite small. Tons of fetches to shuffle cards we Brainstorm away and cards like City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb that give us double mana.
