tendrils of agony )Turn 1 Win Guaranteed)

Vintage

geartank

Instant (21)

• 2x Ad Nauseam
• 1x Ancestral Recall
• 4x Brainstorm
• 4x Cabal Ritual
• 4x Dark Ritual
• 1x Demonic Consultation
• 3x Repeal
• 1x Spoils of the Vault
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

Sorcery (16)

• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 2x Ill-Gotten Gains
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 4x Land Grant
• 3x Night's Whisper
• 4x Tendrils of Agony
• 1x Yawgmoth's Will

Artifact (20)

• 1x Black Lotus
• 4x Chromatic Sphere
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 4x Darkwater Egg
• 1x Lion's Eye Diamond
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Emerald
• 1x Mox Jet
• 1x Mox Pearl
• 1x Mox Ruby
• 1x Mox Sapphire
• 1x Sol Ring

Land (3)

• 1x Bayou
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Tropical Island

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This tendrils deck can win on turn 1 Consistently. I'll run through a few goldfishes with you. I do these goldfishes the honest way - no revision no cheating... just some back-to-back games no cherry picking. I do a five-pile card shuffle three side shuffles a cut to the middle and draw seven cards. And here we go:

Goldfish OneLion's Eye Diamond

Tendrils of Agony

Darkwater Egg

Tropical Island

Mox Sapphire

Cabal Ritual

Night's Whisper

Sadly I don't think this is going to win on turn 1. A little disappointing that our first goldfish is a turn 2 but so be it. The play is: Tropical Island Darkwater Egg and pass.

Turn 2:

Drawing: Another Night's Whisper.

Play Mox Sapphire (Storm 1).

Play Lion's Eye Diamond (Storm 2).

Tap Tropical Island and Mox Sapphire to bust the Egg: UB Floating drawing: Polluted Delta

Play the Polluted Delta and find Bayou.

Tap Bayou for Black. BBU floating.

Play Cabal Ritual. BBBU floating (Storm 3).

Use BB to play Night's Whisper drawing Brainstorm and Mox Ruby (Storm 4).

Play Mox Ruby (Storm 5).

Use U to play Brainstorm (Storm 6) drawing Yawgmoth's Will, Tendrils of Agony, and Spoils of the Vault .

Put Tendrils on top and then Yawgmoth's Will on top of that.

Tap Mox Ruby and use the remaining B to play Night's Whisper. In response break the Lion's Eye Diamond for BBB. (Storm 7) Discard Tendrils of Agony and Spoils of the Vault . Draw the Yawgmoth's Will and Tendrils of Agony off the Night's Whisper.

Play Yawgmoth's Will (Storm 8).

Play Lion's Eye Diamond and sacrifice it for BBB removing the Tendrils in hand from game (Storm 9).

Play the Cabal Ritual from the graveyard (with threshold). BBBBBB floating(Storm 10).

Play Tendrils of Agony from the graveyard and kill your opponent.

You could do a lot more there if you wanted but it's not necessary.

The reason that hand couldn't win on turn 1 was because it didn't have Black mana or access to Black mana.

Goldfish Two

Tendrils of Agony

Repeal

Mox Jet

Dark Ritual

Demonic Consultation

Spoils of the Vault

Tropical Island

Play Mox Jet(Storm 1).

Play Dark Ritual (Storm 2).

Play Tropical Island.

Play Repeal targeting Mox Jet (Storm 3) drawing Dark Ritual.

Replay Mox Jet (Storm 4).

Tap Mox Jet. BBBB floating.

Play Dark Ritual. (Storm 5) BBBBBB floating.

Now your hand is Demonic Consultation Spoils of the Vault and Tendrils of Agony with six black mana floating. What do you do?

You could Consult for a Restricted card like Black Lotus or Yawgmoth's Will - and as long as neither one is in your top six cards you win the game. However I think there is a more certain solution.

I would Demonic Consultation for Cabal Ritual. Play the Ritual then Spoils of the Vault for either another Cabal Ritual or a Dark Ritual (depending on what I had removed with the Consult). If my library is really low you could just get Lotus (assuming its in there) then play the Tendrils for the 10th spell.

I play:

Demonic Consultation naming Cabal Ritual (Storm 6). There is a Cabal Ritual in my top six cards and then there is another 24 cards down. That leaves 22 cards in my deck. Incidentally the two remaining Dark Rituals got removed from game. I know that there is a Yawgmoth's Will Black Lotus and two Cabal Rituals in those 22 cards. The Safest card to spoils for will obviously be another Cabal Ritual. But first:

Play Cabal Ritual. Six Black floating again (Storm 7).

Play Spoils of the Vault naming Cabal Ritual (Storm 8).

I see Cabal Ritual 8 cards down. Play Cabal Ritual (Storm 9).

Play Tendrils of Agony (Storm 10).

Goldfish Three

Lotus Petal

Mana Vault

Land Grant

Brainstorm

Mox Emerald

Demonic Consultation

Dark Ritual

Lotus Petal (Storm 1).

Now what do you do? We know we probably will play Mox into Mana Vault. But what do you do regarding the Consult and the Brainstorm?

Brainstorm and Demonic Consultation have some important synergies. If you Brainstorm then you'll be able to remove the two worst cards from game via Consult. In addition you'll lessen the chance that the card you name is in the top six. The flip side of that is that if you Consult and then Brainstorm you'll dig more deeply through your deck. That's not very compelling compared to the synergy of Brainstorm followed by Consult.

However this hand is complicated by the presence of a shuffle effect: Land Grant.

There are several permutations possible:

1) Brainstorm; Land Grant; Demonic Consultation.2) Brainstorm; Demonic Consultation; Land Grant.3) Demonic Consultation; Land Grant; Brainstorm.4) Demonic Consultation; Brainstorm; Land Grant.5) Land Grant; Brainstorm; Demonic Consultation.6) Land Grant; Demonic Consultation; Brainstorm.

We can eliminate any permutation that plays Consult before Land Grant simply because the risk of removing the Bayou is unacceptable. Thus we can eliminate (2) (3) and (4). That leaves us with (1) (5) or (6).

(1) and (6) eliminate the aforementioned synergies between Brainstorm and Consult. (5) maintains the synergies. However (1) is different from (6) in a critical respect. If we choose (1) or (5) there is a chance that we'll see another Brainstorm. If we do we may wish that we had another shuffle effect before playing Consult. Last week I talked about the nature of skill in Magic - that skill is composed of two processes: forward thinking and pattern recognition. Forward thinking encompasses weighing the risks of two decisions trees or lines of play. This is a tough line of play to optimize. The basic issue is whether the possibility of seeing another Brainstorm or draw spell off of the Brainstorm (which would be optimized only if you Land Grant after Brainstorm but before Consult) outweighs the benefits and has fewer risks than maximizing the synergies between Brainstorm and Consult.

I honestly have no idea if it does or not. The benefits are so slight - and the costs are so slight - that it is very hard to weigh them. If any reader can quantify that I'd love to see it. Since I am incapable of figuring out which play is optimal based upon forward thinking here I'll fall back to pattern recognition. I think Brainstorm plus shuffle effect is one of the most powerful combos in Vintage. Thus I think the right play is (1). Although I think the second-best play is (5).

So:

Break the Petal and play Brainstorm (Storm 2). Drawing: Mox Sapphire, Darkwater Egg, Tropical Island.

Put back Tropical Island for sure and Mox Emerald (I think).

Play Land Grant (Storm 3) finding Bayou. Play Bayou.

Play Mox Sapphire (Storm 4).

At this point playing the mana in the right order is critical. Do you know what to do?

The right play is to play Ritual and then Mana Vault. You are going to want to break the Egg off the Mana Vault but the question is whether the third Black off the Ritual is more valuable then the Blue off the Mox. I think the Blue off the Mox is more valuable. Watch:

Tap Bayou and play Dark Ritual (Storm 5).

Play Mana Vault. (Storm 6) BB floating.

Play Mox Sapphire (Storm 7). Tap it. BBU floating.

Tap Mana Vault and play Darkwater Egg (Storm 8) and break it for UB UUBBB floating drawing: Darkwater Egg.

This way we have UUBBB instead of UBBBB. Regardless it doesn't matter in this particular game because we have already achieved the requisite Storm count to win.

We have five mana floating. This is a simple formality:

Play Demonic Consultation naming Tendrils of Agony (Storm 9).

Two Tendrils were in the top 6 cards including the top card but the third was 15 cards down.

Play Tendrils of Agony (Storm 10). No mana floating.

Ironically if we had been forced to play the second Egg we still would have won.

Incidentally if you wonder why this deck isn't tournament viable you had as much time to make all those plays as you would have in a single turn in Limited. That's why this deck isn't tournament viable.

...

Well it was fun to come back to this deck. Maybe a year from now the card pool will have offered up something else to try.

Until then happy goldfishing.

Feel free to playtest, and dont forget to give a +1!

Date added	7 years
Last updated	7 years
Legality	This deck is Vintage legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 19 - 0 Rares 10 - 0 Uncommons 23 - 0 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	1.53