Sultai Battle of wits: theorizing a possibility to make a working deck
Deck Help forum
Posted on April 21, 2018, 4:59 a.m. by seshiro_of_the_orochi
Final Parting is a great card from dominaria, and besides the two decks i'm already planning with it, i also stumbled upon a nice combo between parting, Battle of Wits and Gaea's Blessing.
As the deck should have somewhat between 220 and 240 cards, i'm struggeling with the sheer mass of control elements to include. The basic idea will be this:
Control the board as heavyly as possible while curving out with your control cards. Get to 10 mana, two of which being black and two more being blue. Find Final Parting, cast it and get Battle of Wits to your hand and Gaea's Blessing to grave. Cast battle, survive one more turn and win the game.
Sultai colours are set, as is the "combo". The rest of the deck isn't too elaborated yet, and i'd like you all to leave me suggestions regarding this. Thanks a lot in advance.
seshiro_of_the_orochi says... #3
legendofa: sounds perfectly correct. Psychic spiral seems like a great wincon. This will be included pretty sure.
April 21, 2018 10:11 a.m.
Based on my own experiences fiddling around with Battle of Wits, I am highly skeptical of this combo.
First, and most importantly, you are never going to get to 10 mana. Even with a heavy ramp package, you are unlikely to find your most efficient ramp cars (this is going to be a theme of my post). Most of the time your combo will give your opponents two turns to stop you--you cast Final Parting, they have a turn, you cast Battle of Wits, they have a turn, you win.
You are right that you need control, but you need to remember you will probably not have the right control spell at any given instance. To that end, avoid counterspells. There are very few viable counterspells, and you are unlikely to have a useful one in-hand by the time you need it.
Focus on control that works after the threat has materialized. This means strong removal spells and fog effects. To that end, White is a great colour for Battle of Wits--Fog and Darkness alone will not cut it.
You are putting too much emphasis on the graveyard. With 240 cards, you do not need to shuffle anything back into your library--you will either win with your first 40 cards, or you will lose. 220 is far too low--at that point you might need graveyard recursion, but that adds an extra step to your victory. Again, with such a large deck, your Battle of Wits victory cannot rely on you having a certain card in-hand.
Further, unless you plan on dumping large numbers of cards into your graveyard to dig for Battle of Wits and other combo pieces, I think legendofa is incorrect about Psychic Spiral. It is far too much mana for what is unlikely to be a kill spell.
I agree you need a secondary win condition--I recommend a persist infinite combo. The entire thing can be done using creatures, which are easily and efficiently tutored directly onto the battlefield.
If you are curious, here is what I've come up with:
240 Card Modern Battle of Wits
Modern
SCORE: 24 | 15 COMMENTS | 1881 VIEWS | IN 5 FOLDERS
April 21, 2018 10:59 a.m.
cdkime I'm going to defer to your experience with Battle of Wits. I did skim over your deck, play tested a couple of hands, and it does look great. The one problem I have with it is that it's more than $2,000. Even setting aside the mana base, it's still a big stash o' cash. I know the realities of financial deck investments, but I'm also a big advocate of budget casual decks.
I don't want to sound like I'm upset, because I'm not. I was just approaching this idea from a streamlined, budget angle in the colors requested, to be developed as time went on.
April 21, 2018 11:21 a.m.
I do fully agree with your sentiment on budget casual decks and would like to clarify: please do not actually try to copy the deck I posted above.
I'm not going to ever build the thing in paper, and cannot recommend anyone else do so. It serves as a theoretical primer on Battle of Wits, and is designed to showcase what I've found to work best with the card after months of playtesting. Ideas and themes should be taken, not the deck itself. Absurd amounts of revisions and refinement still have not made the thing a frightening deck, and its relative power level would be a hard sell at $40, let alone $3,000.
That said, let me go in a bit more detail about why I respectfully disagree on Psychic Spiral being a viable win condition, even in a budget deck.
For Psychic Spiral to mill your opponent, you will have to have dumped 40+ cards into your graveyard by the time you play it. That's possible, but unlikely to have occurred by turn 5-8 (when even budget casual opponents will start winning). For this to be effective, you would have to devote a significant portion of your deck to self-milling--and even then, only have a 1/60 chance of drawing the card that would make all that effort worthwhile. Further, even with graveyard recursion, this plan would work against the primary win condition--you might have drawn your Battle of Wits, but find yourself with 190 cards in your deck and no way to recur the cards you've milled.
April 21, 2018 11:58 a.m.
cdkime On your deck: Totally fair. I have my share of unbuildable decks floating around my lists.
On Psychic Spiral: Again, I'll defer to your actual experience over my guesswork. I was trying to be devil's advocate and describe exactly why it would be a suitable win condition, but every line of reasoning I followed either took me way past the 5-6 turn mark (my personal measure for casual success, derived from lots of experience) or negated the Battle of Wits win condition, just as you said.
I'll try to be more judicious with my suggestions for something I don't know anything about in the future. :)
April 21, 2018 12:35 p.m.
Nonsense! Judicious suggestions stagnate innovation, and it is often quite helpful to have an outside eye give new perspective. Most every suggestion (except perhaps Storm Crow) gives cause to reevaluate our decks, and see if something new might work.
April 21, 2018 12:42 p.m. Edited.
cdkime That's what I like to hear!
So now, back to seshiro_of_the_orochi and some injudicious suggestions from an outsider:
Crystal Ball is, in my opinion, the best top deck manipulation this side of Sensei's Divining Top.
Since you want to get to 10 mana fast, Explore is gas. Rites of Flourishing is more budget, but also gives your opponent gas. (Juvenile humor FTW) Walking Atlas can also work, as can any of the ritual cards.
Control: Abrupt Decay is awesome but expensive, as is Maelstrom Pulse. Pernicious Deed is something to keep your eye on. The usual suite of Negate, Mana Leak, and Counterspell are all available.
Darkness and Fog are in. If you choose to add white, Ethereal Haze is the best option, and Dawn Charm can go in, depending on what else you have.
Recursion: for when things go bad, Eternal Witness, Noxious Revival, and Regrowth are all reasonably cheap options.
April 21, 2018 12:59 p.m.
I meant Exploration, not Explore. Which also works, I guess. Curse these similarly-named cards.
April 21, 2018 1 p.m.
seshiro_of_the_orochi says... #11
Half a day off and this is the discussion that happens. Gotta love this site. Thanks for all the great input. cdkime: it's great to hear about bow from someone who took that much time to make it kind of playable (did this sound sarcastic? Wasn't intended to at all). I'll take this into consideration while coming closer to doing a list. We'll see what comes next.
legendofa says... #2
Going off your other decks, this should be reasonably budget. The main things I see this deck needing are the curving-out control you mentioned (counterspells, removal, discrd, maybe some fog effects) and a good number of scry/tutor/draw/find what you need effects, with a touch of ramp to keep progress moving forward.
With this many cards, you should have lots of room for a secondary win con, maybe something along the Reanimator lines. Or Psychic Spiral, if you've ever wanted to mill somebody for their entire deck with one card.
Does this all sound right?
April 21, 2018 9:55 a.m.