The Grift of the Magi

Vintage Budget Combo Discard Mill UBR (Grixis) Wheels

Balaam__

Land (24)

• 3x Clearwater Pathway  ^Flip
• 3x Island
• 4x Mountain
• 3x Reliquary Tower
• 4x Shivan Reef
• 4x Sulfurous Springs
• 3x Swamp

Sorcery (16)

• 4x Burning Inquiry
• 4x Collective Defiance
• 3x Conflagrate
• 1x Ponder
• 4x Thoughtseize

Creature (8)

• 4x Magus of the Wheel
• 4x Notion Thief

Instant (12)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 4x Lightning Bolt
• 4x Mana Leak
• 3x Prismari Command

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Sideboard

Artifact (3)

• 1x Grafdigger's Cage
• 1x Pithing Needle
• 1x Torpor Orb

Enchantment (3)

• 3x Sphinx's Tutelage

Instant (4)

• 2x Baleful Mastery
• 2x Surgical Extraction

Land (2)

• 2x Bojuka Bog

Sorcery (3)

• 3x Nahiri's Wrath

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Maybeboard

Sorcery (4)

• 1x Day's Undoing
• 1x Reforge the Soul
• 1x Turbulent Dreams
• 1x Winds of Change

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Improbable Alliance

Creature (1)

• 1x Snapcaster Mage

Artifact (1)

• 1x Howling Mine

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Riding the coattails of Squee_Spirit_Guide and Andramalech, I’d like to leech off their goodwill and ingratiate myself as a third wheel into their collaborative build-athon.

Of course, as I was not formally invited and am instead a party crasher of sorts, it goes without saying that each of their builds should be judged on their own merits and in no way ought mine to be factored in. I just so happened to be tagged by name in one of their dialogue exchanges discussing the proposed collaboration, and couldn’t resist joining in on the fun. So I picked a Magus, shoehorned it into an appropriate ‘work in progress’ shell and slapped the finishing touches on it. Enjoy!

The Mana Base

This was by far the hardest part of the design process. Building an effective and consistent tri-color mana base is no small task, and to make matters worse I had the added stipulation of the end result needing to be budget friendly looming overhead.

•Shivan Reef, Sulfurous Springs and Clearwater Pathway   are our workhorses, and are a decent compromise in lieu of über expensive duals, fetches or shocklands.

•Reliquary Tower is here owing to utility rather than the generic mana it generates. The limitless hand it permits will contribute toward our wincon, once everything else falls into place.

•A smattering of basic Grixis lands as a safeguard against Blood Moon effects is also included.

Don’t Bother Me, I’m Strategizing

We have little in the way of either an offensive or a defensive battlefield presence, and so we’re forced to rely on alternative measures to stay alive.

Proactive Countermeasures Show

•Thoughtseize They can’t cast what they no longer posses in hand. Transfigurate that tangible card into an ethereal memory existing only in the graveyard.

•Lightning Bolt is every bit the heavy hitter it was back in 1994, punching well above its weight. Reduce to ash that which poses even the mildest threat.

•Collective Defiance is our bunker buster, with option #2 hitting hardened targets Lightning Bolt just can’t demolish. We will discuss option #1 further on, but suffice to say due to the nature of our strategy option #3 is irrelevant.

•Prismari Command is a grand new spell from the Strixhaven expansion. While I detest the set as a whole, there’s no arguing the versatility of this card. Covering a wide range of possibilities, expect to see this card pop up again later…

Reactive Countermeasures Show

•Mana Leak is our counterspell du jour, owing to the complexities of a 3 color mana base rendering the actual Counterspell and its double {U}{U} too difficult to cast. This will do in a pinch, although Vintage is indeed the worst format to run it in due to a surplus of fast mana.

Birth of a Notion

After the rules were established by the parties involved, a third wheel like me had to choose a Magus to build around. My gut instinct was to also go with Magus of the Mirror, but out of respect I instead chose one of the Magi that hadn’t been picked. Deliberating didn’t take long; I settled on the chaotic Magus of the Wheel. The real question was, ‘What is the most offensive, degenerate way I could abuse it?’

The answer involves a plethora of interactions revolving around Notion Thief. As a general rule this little rogue is weak and prone to removal, so it’s best to flash him in as necessary. Also, be prepared to lean heavily on our removal and countermagic as it’s likely he’ll become a priority for ‘planned obsolescence’ by your opponent. This is also why we run a full four copies, he being a central pillar to our entire operation.

Ezekiel 10:10

To unlock Notion Thief’s true potential, we need draw spells. Not the typical 1 pip for 1 card spells that are oh-so-carefully balanced; no, we want to open the floodgates. All the usual drawbacks associated with big card advantage instead turn into boons, courtesy of Notion Thief.

Take Burning Inquiry for example. While it is true we will have to discard 3 cards at random, so will our opponent. The difference is we will get to draw our 3 cards, then draw their 3 cards, while they still have to discard 3 cards. It is truly the very definition of adding insult to injury.

•Magus of the Wheel has indeed brought gifts; a myriad of fresh cards for us, naught but emptiness and anguish for our opponent. Activating his ability effectively doubles our hand size while consigning your opponent’s hand (and hopes for the future) to the great beyond.

•Collective Defiance’s first option functions much the same. Watch the cards fall through their fingers like grains of sand, while you draw just as many.

•Prismari Command enjoys syndication in this stage of the game, as the second option nets us 2 cards while forcing the opponent to discard two. All the payoff with none of the work!

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The Wincon Show

All the cards in Mark Rosewater’s self storage locker won’t help you if you don’t have a clear path to victory. Our winning strategy revolves around Conflagrate. We want it to enter our graveyard early on; whether that means investing the mana to nuke a creature threat or by paying {0} into {X}, thereby sending it straight to the graveyard. However it gets there, rest assured that with the inordinate number of draws we’ll be making thanks to our Magi and friends, dumping all those excess cards into Conflagrate’s flashback cost will annihilate your opponent with little effort.

TL;DR

•Engage in passive-aggressive resistance with discard, removal and countermagic, leveraging Brainstorm and Ponder to acquire key pieces.

•With a Conflagrate waiting in the graveyard, flash in Notion Thief. You may wish to stretch your arms and fingers, as you’ll be doing quite a bit of repetitious reaching to and from your library…

•Brandishing a fistful of wheel effect spells, capitalize on the depraved and amoral one-two punch of stealing your opponent’s draws and forcing them to do the discarding, culminating in a meteoric blast from Conflagrate that will leave a smoking crater where their life total once was. Then sit back and watch your beleaguered opponent lamenting the fact they haven’t held a card for much of the game.

The Sideboard

Lots of good tinctures and tonics here.

•Torpor Orb blocks irritating ETB’s, of which there are many in Vintage.

•Bojuka Bog for graveyard hate, and having access to another source of {B} is never a bad thing.

•Pithing Needle goes a step further than Torpor Orb in shutting down abilities post summoning.

•Surgical Extraction cherry picks nuisances away.

•Grafdigger's Cage makes life a nightmare for Reanimation decks and graveyard-centric strategies.

•Nahiri's Wrath and Baleful Mastery for some good old fashioned creature removal, with the former almost certainly being a boardwipe while the latter’s alternate cost is particularly spiteful. Yes, I could run Boros Reckoner and target it with Nahiri’s Wrath, reflecting that lethal damage directly at the opponent, but I already have a Boros Reckoner deck and didn’t want to cross my streams, as it were.

•Sphinx's Tutelage is a nice little alternate wincon. Stick one early, and once the draws start flooding in sit back and watch your opponent’s library be erased two cards at a time.

Housekeeping

•Find Andramalech’s challenge build here: Magus of the Owls

•Find Squee_Spirit_Guide’s challenge build here: I'm not dead, you're dead!

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As regards the Maybeboard, these are leftovers from a previous iteration of the shell before reappropriating it for this impromptu buttinski Magus build. I’ve left them here to show I am aware of them, were anyone thinking of suggesting them.

”To the wheels—to them was made the cry—O whirling wheel! in mine ears.”

Top Ranked	Achieved #13 position overall 1 year ago Achieved #1 position in Vintage 1 year ago
Date added	1 year
Last updated	1 year
Legality	This deck is Vintage legal.
Rarity (main - side)	0 - 3 Mythic Rares 30 - 7 Rares 10 - 3 Uncommons 10 - 2 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.06
Tokens	Treasure
Folders	Vintage, Cool decks