Instant (25)
Land (25)
Sideboard
Sorcery (8)
Artifact (3)
Maybeboard
Enchantment (2)
Instant (1)
Sorcery (1)
Precognition Field is a terrible card: kinda expensive, extremely slow, does absolutely nothing for your board presence, imposes a significant deckbuilding restriction, and it isn't even a wincon... which is great! That just means the card is dirt cheap and we can brew with it for a song.
Minority Report is an Izzet control deck that uses Precognition Field as virtual card advantage, allowing us to shoot down our opponent's threats without even spending cards until we get to 9 mana, at which point we finish off the game with a barrage of burn spells. Sounds like fun, right?
I see your future...
Let's start by talking about our card draw: Precognition Field, Opt, Tragic Lesson, and Supreme Will.
Precognition Field is our keystone card, what makes the deck shimmer. Not only does it help us plan our next turn but it can easily "draw" us three, four, five cards over the course of a game, maybe even more. It's pretty terrible in multiples but you can just exile those away before drawing them. Other than itself, the lands, and two cards in the sideboard, everything else in the deck is an Instant or Sorcery so Precog Field has lots of hits.
Opt and Supreme Will play a strong role in card selection, helping us draw into Precog Field and hit our land drops. It's very important for this deck to hit its land drops consistently as we want to get up to 9 mana and don't have any ramp. Tragic Lesson deserves a bit more explanation: the discard lets us pseudo-cycle extra copies of Precog Field we happen to draw (more than one is almost totally useless), and while we don't want to pick up lands very often, it can actually be the right call sometimes with a Precog Field out if we can see that we'll be missing our next land drop anyway. Divination may just be better, but being able to cast all our card selection at instant speed really helps take full advantage of Precog Field.
...You're on fire...
Burning people out is our only built-in win condition so we'd better have a lot of burn, right?
Shock and Lightning Strike start us out small, working to clear the board early and go to face once we feel the end of the game drawing near. The importance of the instant speed on these cards cannot be understated: chaining a few together off the top of your deck during your Upkeep step before drawing for the turn is really powerful, and you can even cast them to "dig" for a crucial counterspell.
However, our primary win condition is a kicked Fight with Fire or two. 10 damage out of nowhere is enough to make the toughest opponents wince and you can even pick off a few pesky critters on the way. Sandbag a Fight with Fire or two during the early game and you can close things out very quickly once you hit 9 mana.
... And flailing about...
9 mana is an awful lot, however, and we can't rely on just Shock and Lightning Strike to get there, so we're also packing some of that sweet Blue disruption that opponents find so delightful.
Syncopate is our all-purpose counterspell, good on Turn 2, good on Turn 10. It's like a Censor that stays relevant as the game goes long. Supreme Will pinch-hits as a backup Syncopate when we don't need it for card selection.
We often want to tap out on turn 4 or 5 to get down our Precog Field, though, so Blink of an Eye has us covered for that. Our opponent can drop their bomb while the shields are down, but then we'll just Blink it on their next end step and Syncopate it on its way back down.
And finally, when all else fails, we have two copies of Kefnet's Last Word as a hedge against serious threats. This even works as a backup wincon: steal our opponent's best creature and beat them to death with it. What's not to love?
... You're wandering for such a long time, too...
Lands are pretty simple: Highland Lake, Zhalfirin Void, and Evolving Wilds with a hearty dose of Islands and Mountains. We're a two-color budget deck so I didn't want to go crazy with the lands.
Zhalfirin Void and Evolving Wilds are worth a bit more detail, though, as they both almost read "draw a card" once you have a Precog Field out, the former when it ETBs and the latter when you crack it. I didn't want to get Void-flooded since our fixing isn't spectacular so I'm only running 2 Voids, but if you were to switch to a full non-budget mana base, it might be worthwhile to go up to 3 or even 4.
Note that if you're going to upgrade this deck, you should definitely start with the lands. Playsets of Spirebluff Canals and Sulfur Falls in place of Highland Lakes and Evolving Wilds will give you an immediate, noticeable power boost. It'll just also run you an extra $55, so I Opted to cut the total deck price by six instead.
... Honestly, you're kinda screwed.
The sideboard is a smattering of random things: Sweltering Suns for go-wide, River's Rebuke for decks with lots of non-creature permanents, Crook of Condemnation for graveyard management, Release the Gremlins for artifact destruction (plus the tokens can be handy), and some trusty Negates. There's even a fun-of copy of Squee, the Immortal since he's the one creature in Standard that synergies with Precog Field and it can be nice to have infinite chump-blockers sometimes. The sideboard is pretty speculative at the moment; iteration continues.
Also of note, Abrade is better than Release the Gremlins and you should definitely run that instead if you have a few copies, but they're $2 each and not strictly necessary so I left them out of the budget build. The more Instants you can slot into the deck, the better it runs.
That'll be $11, please. I hope you enjoyed your fortune.
Thanks for reading my silly little deck! The price is cheap, many of the cards are powerful, and you get to take games off people without ever casting a single creature. Magic as Dr. Garfield intended it, indeed.
Let me know if you have any suggestions. I would love to hear your thoughts about how to improve the deck.
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| Top Ranked |
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| Date added | 5 years |
| Last updated | 5 years |
| Legality | This deck is not Standard legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 6 - 9 Rares 12 - 3 Uncommons 27 - 3 Commons |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 2.26 |
| Tokens | Gremlin 2/2 R |
| Folders | Decks, Budget deck, Interesting Standard Decks, Phil's Deck Ideas, Izzet |
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