My very first deck was the Blue/Red Flashback-themed intro pack from the original Innistrad set, which I received for my birthday from my older brother. I instantly fell in love with the Spells archetype, the Flashback mechanic, and UR as a color pair all at the same time. This deck was the first I called mine, and I constantly tweaked it for several years, eventually adding old cards with flashback, and eventual splashing a bit of green. Right now, it isn't modern legal, and with all of the graveyard hate and fragility of the deck, it would never be a good deck, but I love it to pieces. If I were to make it modern legal, I would swap the
Roar of the Wurm
cards for
Call of the Herd
, and drop
Moment's Peace
possibly for
Gnaw to the Bone
.
Catalyst Stone
would also need replacement, and I definitely wouldn't use
Altar of the Lost
.
Essentially, this deck plays out like this in the nut draw:
Turn 1: Red source, then
Faithless Looting
discarding at least one
Roar of the Wurm
and perhaps a
Think Twice
or
Desperate Ravings
. That gives us 3 cards in our graveyard with flashback, which is basically a second hand.
Turn 2: Blue source, then
Goblin Electromancer
or
Baral, Chief of Compliance
. Reduces the cost of our spells in hand and graveyard. what more could we possibly want? we could get a 6/6 wurm next turn even if that's all we did.
Baral
even gives us a benefit when we use our
Mana Leak
s to protect our
Burning Vengeance
later in the game.
Turn 3: This turn can work a few different ways, which is one of the many reasons I love this deck. Normally I like to drop
Burning Vengeance
to start pumping out damage the next turn, because that is what the deck utilizes to win, if not by
Artful Dodge-ing
creatures through. Another option in this scenario would be to to drop a
Catalyst Stone
followed by any of our 3 flashback spells, but preferably
Roar of the Wurm
. 6/6 on turn 3, and a setup for every spell in our graveyard to cast only a single colored mana? YES PLEASE!
Turn 4+: Essentially this is where we start just digging through the deck and casting spells out of the graveyard, or creatures like
Guttersnipe
or
Young Pyromancer
. cast our
Vengeance
if we haven't already. I think the game plan from here is pretty straightforward.
Mana Leak
, once they know we have this we can start saving mana until their eot, holding or bluffing a counter, then casting think twices,
Geistflame
s, and desperate ravings out of the yard.
Burning vengeance is awesome because it can target large threats to eliminate them before dishing damage onto our opponent. It also turns
Geistflame
s and
Lava Dart
s into
Lightning Bolt
s, or we can split the damage among targets as needed.
I tried
Secrets of the Dead
a few times, but I always always disappointed with it. I'd rather drop a vengeance. While turning all of my graveyard casts into cantrips sounds great at first glance, it is too slow and doesn't do anything to make my opponent lose, kind of like the "life gain problem": While gaining life can slow down your loss, it doesn't speed up your victory on its own. Plus, I have a ton of card draw in the deck already and never run out of spells to cast since I practically have a second hand of the stuff I'm discarding with
Looting
and
Ravings
.
"Why run Vengeance instead of X in a spells deck? You could win faster and don't just die to enchantment removal or graveyard hate!"
Yeah. And your Zoo swarm dies to wrath of god. I know Vengeance probably isn't "the best" thing in the world, but I love that card. As I mentioned earlier, Innistrad was my first block and Flashback my favorite mechanic. I used to win a lot with this deck in high school because my meta didn't have a lot of graveyard hate, and now I'm finally putting the list here because I recently rebuilt it.
I hope those who enjoy Flashback, or even just crazy casual decks will enjoy this list, because to me it truly puts together all of my favorite things about Magic.
Some of the cards in this description might not be in the list currently as I tend to change things around as I feel necessary.
