It is constantly evolving atm - for now, I've dropped jalira and sanguine and added 4 XXXX for early defense and easier survival. Fast decks are more common than flies on... nvm.

So 1 color less, more gates for easier activation of saruli and jalira died too often to removal before being useful anyways. Pulling in a vizkopa + 7lifegain creature with rescue has been the main kill for me anyways - or seance, which is a bit slower. I haven't felt the need for more stuff to fill my graveyard, my played creatures are either countered or killed anyway and I rarely need more than 1-3 in the yard.

Not sure where it ends atm.

And it seems someone already made this in the Abzan thread - nearly identical. oh well, it was fun with jalira too, so I'll leave it there.

So the xbox 360 user CRAFTWARS seems to only play this one deck every time I'm matched up with him (at least 6-7 times over the past few months). Hes one of the better xbox 360 players. These are the cards that were in his graveyard or on the board. It looks like a pile but is one of the nastiest control decks I've faced. I may be missing a card or two. He played a 60 card deck with 24 lands. The number by the card name is what I'm positive is in the deck. If any vets could help me recreate this, I'd appreciate it.

2x Rune scarred Demon
1x Sheoldred
1x Suffer the Past
2x Fog
3x Cultivate
3x Elvish Visionary
3x Satyr Wayfinder
1x Monomania
2x Treasured Find
3x Grazing Gladeheart
2x Cloudshift
3x Wall of Omens
3x Think Twice
1x planar Cleansing

Why not make friends with him and ask him about it/play him more?

I've sent him a few PMs to play and a decklist request, but no responses. I put together a version of this deck guessing at the numbers and its decent. you basically ramp, cleanse the board, get monomania, finish with a big flyer or Suffer.

I wanted to post this for discussion.

This is Steely Danno's deck that he's playing in the current XBOX 360 tournament.. and it is an absolute monster. He handed me my ass with this deck in rather dominant fashion.. and I was playing Monk/Hakeem's Total Control/Monkeem Project or whatever title you prefer. When I looked at the list it didn't strike me as being so dominant.. but after playing against it being used so masterfully by Danno.. I had to take it out for some spins.

There's no holes. It has answers for just about every strategy in the game. I gave a newer player the build and explained how it works to see if I could beat it.. and he beat my ass like 5-8 games in a row. The only deck I could beat it with was my Dimir Discard deck.. using Suffer the Past to exile Kozilek after I killed him, and Dinrova Horror to get Sphinx Bone Wand in the graveyard so I could exile that too.. which took at TON of discard to pull off since there is so much draw in Danno's deck.

It really is a top notch build.. it impressed me greatly. I take my hat off to you Danno.. its really a work of art. I did take out one Wall of Omens for the 3rd Reprisal.. but other than that.. I wouldn't change a thing.

Wow, thanks for the kind words! Glad you're enjoying it.

I agree that it's pretty resilient, consistent, and gives you a decent chance to win against most strategies. Spider Spawning and such is still tough, but we can actually go over top of them with the combo and we gain a lot of life, so outside of a Beastmaster Ascension we can usually live long enough to come up with something. Craterhoof Behemoth is about a 50/50...you have to be aware of their mana and wipe the board before the big guy lands, then counterpunch them really hard and fast before they can rebuild.

And it's not exactly a glaring weakness, but I've noticed that Mentor of the Meek and Graveborn Muse create beaucoup card advantage well in advance of Planar Cleansing, allowing the opponent to rebuild quickly. Just makes the match a lot longer and grindier, and you have to be really judicious about when to deploy bombs and in what order.

The tournament is really diverse, so I'll have more interesting combat data as the rounds progress.

Steely Danno I have been playing this stack and it's great. Been crushing aggro and lost a few against other long game control (mostly 5 color).

I took the mana down to 23 and went to 3 Cultivate to sub in 2 Phytotitan. If it comes out early enough it just goes the distance unless exiled. I am going to put in the other wand to boost the win-cons a bit because Rune-scarred Demon is only coming out maybe 2 of 3 games to fetch it. Have you felt the need for a boost to win-cons? What do you normally fetch when you land rune scarred? I've been grabbing the wand or the other demon.

Rune Scarred, Pelakka and Kozi usually beatdown well for me. I wouldn't put the second wand in.. having two in your hand sucks.

I use Demon to fetch whatever combo pieces aren't in my hand (Wand, Archaemancer, Cloudshift). I often have 2 of these in my hand, or I tend to need Archaeomancer.. so I will Cloudshift rune scarred to go find him.

Also.. if you want more creatures, Baneslayer and Sheoldred would be on my radar.. not Phytotitan.

Heh heh, I knew Phytotitan would be met with disdain. It's definitely a flavor thing and I will prob take it out.

Do you think we could find room for 1 fog in this deck to use as an additional defense against Hoofy, and a small wand trigger?

Glad you're having some fun with it!

When RSZ lands, you just go for the thing you need the most at the moment. Honestly, most of the time I fetch a Cloudshift, you can blank a removal spell of theirs and then get whatever else it is that you actually need to win (or avoid losing if that's the state you're in).

Don't necessarily hurry to assemble the wand combo. Make efficient use of your creatures and shifts and just try to kill them through attacking. If you don't think that's likely to succeed, go for the combo OR if you have enough time, and enough mana, just get Kozilek. Whatever they need to do to mitigate him will deplete their resources while he refills yours.

The mana is fairly precarious, so I don't want to get too greedy with the black spells. However, I definitely overlooked Sheoldred, as Beast suggested. While she doesn't have an ETB trigger of her own, she will trigger all the ones in your graveyard and eat the opposing board to boot if she stays alive. I'm going to ride this build through until the XBox tournament is over, but consider cutting a Jungle Shrine for an Arcane Sanctum, and something for Sheoldred. I wouldn't cut a Cultivate, but it's possible that the deck can get away with 23 land.

Dude, that deck is mean...

I can see this as a definite possibility and we should test it, although I'm unsure what to cut. If we are already cutting down to 23 lands to make room for Sheoldred, then we definitely can't cut another, or any of the ramp spells (Cultivate & Ingot). I hate to shave any of these, but if I was going to jam Fog in here, cutting a War Monk, Reprisal, or a Pelakka Wurm would be where I'd start.

Fog has a lot of good uses here apart from saving us from the Hoof. Fog plus Archaeomancer and Cloudshift, plus evasive damage like RSZ or Pelakka Wurm, could allow you to win a midrange race when you're very far behind. It can buy you the extra turn you need after you've landed your combo pieces but don't have enough white mana left over to win. It can let you survive that T5 goblin swarm so you can Planar Cleanse--but watch out for people who fully understand how Skullcrack works.

That does look like a nice decklist Danno. I have been playing removal heavy decks and it will be fun to try something different. Another nice addition to that deck might be seance - everything you have has nice EtBs except the war monks.

On a completely different note - Laboratory Maniac. He is blue, but I don't think blue is enough for a self-mill deck. I wanted to splash a bunch of different colors - white for Seance, black and green for Treasured Find etc.

I did not want to simply toss the maniac into an existing deck archetype, e.g. Abzhan self mill. I don't want to run the maniac as insurance, I want a deck that uses him as a primary win condition.



Not included in the deck planner - 2 maniacs.

Basically my principle when building this deck was go for self mill, but not self mill that nothing else. Satyr Wayfinder gets me a 1/1 body, gets me a land 80% of the time, and puts 3 or 4 cards in my graveyard for 2 mana. Tome Scour just puts 5 cards in the yard. The only dedicated self mill card I run is hedron crab, because it just has tremendous value over the course of the game. Doorkeeper is potentially useful if the game stalls and you have a ton of walls, but I think he requires a defender deck to shine and that isn't what I wanted to play with.

The key card in this deck is Seance. Usually I fetch seance after milling it via Treasured Find. Once seance is online, the deck becomes turbocharged. Seance can also reanimate the maniac for a turn so you can draw the last cards in your library and win the game.

One card that I wanted to fit in here was Fog, maybe even just one or two as archaeomancer targets in the later game. But I am not sure what the cut would be.

Any idea on what you would change for Sheoldred? I'm digging this deck.

I cut one Wall of Omens for a Reprisal. You could probably start there.

I made a thing, cloudshift combo with damage prevention (considering quicken/PC for some removal don't know what to cut)
Edit: I decided quicken/PC was probably worth it... also I noticed the derp I made with arcane sanctums and orzhov guildgates ended up cutting those anyways cause the black demand is next to nothing also updating the list here

I think you need more than a single win condition. I would definitely play the other Wand and maybe even a Talrand. Guard Gomazoa is also really good in this sort of list. I'm not sold on Quicken or Rescue here.

It might end up not being correct, but I'd first try cutting an Inspiration for Sheoldred. Much as I feel the deck is in balance, that would probably create the least disturbance, more than cutting a land or one of the cantrip guys, as those are the ones that most ensure you hit all your land drops and your ramp spells on time.

I made a couple changes to the deck based upon hakeem's recommendations (thanks for that btw)
So let me start by saying that I love rescue in this deck especially now that I'm adding Guard Gomazoa, it allows me to save both a archeomancer and either damage prevention or a PC or the cloudshift I need to finish my opponent next turn, so I kept that in.
now let me put the actual changes here:
-2 quicken
-3 hysterical blindness
+1 talrand
+1 sphynx bone wand
+3 guard gomazoa
I've been considering removing the 4th hysterical blindness in favor of Kozilek as a fourth win condition (and his whole reshuffle the grave into the deck thing might be pretty useful to), and because in games where I have played hysterical blindness it frankly didn't do the job it was meant to do which is save my face from the big meanies out there

Edit I also noticed another mistake in my mana cause I'm blind aparently so:
-2 azorious guildgates +2 arcane sanctums