Thanks to the inspiration of #bd's own AxeMurder, we found a replace for Intuition in this deck; Buried Alive. It can be ritualed out on its own, of course, and this change prompts the switch from Force of Will to Unmask, where FoW was too unwieldly to begin with. The only problem is that Buried Alive did not also grab your kill card. Now it does.
The trick is in Aerial Caravan, a crappy blue Mercadian Masques creature with an ability that basically does everything Whispers of the Muse does except generate lasting card advantage.
The deck evolved into something far jankier than any established combo deck, but, so far, it has worked. Here's the listing:
// Name: AssCombo.dec (Befitting, is it not?)
// Spells (29)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
4 Buried Alive
4 Dark Ritual
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Duress
2 Entomb
1 Kaervek's Torch
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Tainted Pact
1 Time Walk
4 Unmask
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Whispers of the Muse
// Artifacts (4)
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
// Enchantments (6)
3 Animate Dead
3 Dance of the Dead
// Creatures (4)
2 Aerial Caravan
2 Worldgorger Dragon
// Land (17)
2 City of Brass
4 Forsaken City
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Rainbow Vale
4 Underground Sea
2 Undiscovered Paradise
The first thing you'll notice is that we have removed some of the powerful drawers, namely Necropotence and Timetwister, but we have done better without them.
Next, you'll notice that our mana base is comprised almost entirely of gimplands, with 1 uber-gimpland as a variable. The majority of us have chosen Rainbow Vale for the sheer coolness factor, but there are other options in School of the Unseen/Henge of Ramos, Rhystic Cave, Tarnished Citadel, Thran Quarry, and probably others we have neglected to consider.
EXPLANATIONS:
Spells:
1 Brainstorm-Used to smooth out a bad hand, protect a combo piece from discard, or get a creature or two back into your library from your hand.
1 Kaervek's Torch-There are plenty of other options, but, for this version, we have concluded that Torch is the best damage kill. We endorse Flaming Gambit for the Intuition version, however.
1 Tainted Pact-It's a damn good search/tutor effect, frankly. We had more, but there is just no room. Honestly, though, we are considering dropping this for another mana source, and we may very well have to.
1 Whispers of the Muse-With Entomb still around, since Buried Alive alone was not enough, sometimes we will still run without Caravan. I would like a second Whispers, if not more, but, of course, there is just no room.
1 Lotus Petal-This has been awesome, giving me most of my turn 1 kills. Off-color things will not cut it, so other moxen and Sol Ring are out, excepting Mox Diamond, which was hard to use because, often, we didn't have an extra land to feed it with.
3 Animate Dead/3 Dance of the Dead-Originally, we had 4 Animate and 2 DotD. We quickly reversed that because people are quick to think of Animate and not so much for DotD. When we started using Pact, we changed this to 3:3, for the obvious reasons.
Gimp Lands and such:
City of Brass cannot be used to go infinite, so we tried to keep this to a minimum.
Forsaken City provides everything we need with a drawback that is used usually only once, if ever.
Gemstone Mine does the same thing with a drawback you'll probably never feel.
Paradise is slightly less optimal than those above.
Rainbow Vale doesn't work has well as Paradise, but it's good enough.
I think that's about it. We have not been able to come up with a decent looking sideboard for this monstrosity of a deck, so any help on that would be appreciated. Any other suggestions would be nice, as well.
Props to:
Axe for the suggestion.
Kaewt and Ogami_Itto for helping build the deck (Well, okay, Ogami made it, I fined tuned it, and Kaewt sat around and mooched off us). ;D
If there's anything I missed, feel free to post it.
Peace.
Assuming you guys are familiar with the rest of the cards, check this out:
Aerial Caravan: Creature - Soldier~4UU~4/3~Flying ~ 1UU: Remove the top card of your library from the game. Until end of turn, you may play that card as though it were in your hand.~MM-R
Also, since TehKaewt doesn't have his (), he wants me to post:
"MOOCH MY ASS
-TEH"
Carry on. :>
Torch doesn't work, needs to be an instant.
Im guessing you use the combo, get your infinite amount of mana then end it by finally animating the Caravan right? But for this to work, you need to use Buried Alive or both emtombs. Doesnt this slow the combo down A LOT and thus make it easily succeptible to counter-magic? Its harder to "just win" with this version I'd think. Lemme know if I overlooked something.
Bo is right and wrong. Caravan allows your kill to be sorcery speed, since it stops the infinite loop. Though you are now more reliant on a 3cc sorcery instead of a 1cc instant, the overall speed of the deck has not been hurt. Much like Academy, Apprentice screws the shuffles sometimes, but Ogami has done well with it IRL. The goldfishing record has remained in as good a shape as Academy, with turns 3-2 being the most common. Occasionally a 1, occasionally a 4, once in a great while you'll stumble and just not draw anything. So far, the only foils are those that would also tear up any other viable combo deck: Multiple strips, if we don't go off turn 1 or so, and something like rit-duress-hymn would us.
yeah, torch only works if you have caravan buried to get you out of the combo loop. This seems a little awkward at first glance, but who knows--it might work.
What the deck really wants is a more reliable draw mechanism. Sometimes you just don't get what you need in the first few turns (the same stands for the intuition build, but intuition itself will find what you need, once you have the mana). Playing a slower game with intuition or tainted pact gives you more stability, but the lack of speed makes you less effective. In conclusion, I say DCI: Unrestrict Necro so we can make this a reliable turn 2 kill deck. :|
In conclusion, both versions are pretty assy. The end.
'least it was fun to fiddle around with =P